#i also forgot to say but she's actually a rogue i am just drawing her in a dress because art is free real estate

[ai-no-kokuhaku]

Ah yes sorry that's what I meant!! Have just stumbled upon your acc through that one art post, so I didn't know you were new to the series. Big fan of city/mage elf with Alistair, and your art is lovely 🥹

aa yeah!! i just started playing the series for the first time because i know veilguard is coming out, and i wanted to play through the series before it came out so i didn't get spoiled! thank you for the compliments, i don't normally draw npc character art so i'm glad that people have had such a positive reaction

[rogue-durin-16]

AN UNUSUAL YEAR (Part IV/V)

Summary: After having little to no interest on girls for five years, Fred suddenly feels the need to nag the shit out of a certain witch, completely oblivious to the reason behind it.

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Slytherin!Reader

Genre: fluff (+ enemies to lovers)

Taglist:

An unusual year: @natural-hearts @manuosorioh @lumos-solemn @westyywifee @whiskeyn-rain @warlock--protection @gossip-girl-ecr @fandomscombine @birdy944 @28cnn

Permanent taglist: @elia-the-bibliophile @randomparanoid @karlthecat15722 @thebutchersdaughtersblog

Warnings: none

A/N: BOI IS THIS LOOONG. I knew this part would get a bit out of hand since I wanted to write all of this in the same chapter but still damn. Anyway, enjoy <3

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part V

Rogue-durin-16 masterlist

Here's a variety of Yule Ball outfits for y'all 👀:

Outfit 1 outfit 2 outfit 3 outfit 4 outfit 5

"You sure you don't wanna come to the ball?" I asked Mathilda, climbing down the dormitories' stairs.

"No, I'd rather stay..." Her mouth opened in agape when she saw me. "You look... Wow."

"Why, thank you." I replied, walking towards my best friend with a smile. "I'll probably be here before 10:00 pm." I assured her, squeezing her shoulders. "And we can gossip a bit."

"Already looking forward to it." Mathilda patted my hand with a chuckle. "Have fun, will you?"

I nodded and waved her goodbye before leaving the common room.

"Bloody hell, Y/l/n!" George, who as promised, had been waiting for me at the entrance of the dungeons, shamelessly though harmlessly, checked me out. "You clean up nice, huh?"

"Of course I do." I walked to meet him at his spot. "You don't look so bad yourself, Weasley." With his chin up and a proud smile, he offered me his arm, which I gladly took, and we headed off to the Great Hall.

A fairly big crowd had formed at the doors, mostly conformed by people who were waiting for their partner slash group, and some not-so-subtle gossips.

While I intended to go straight into the Hall, George tugged me away from the shortest path, claiming that he wanted to 'have an overall view'.

I reckoned he had something else in mind when we passed by Fred and Angelina, both immersed in their conversation until my friend caught a glimpse of us.

"Damn Y/n!" I held back George, who was playing dumb for some reason, and made my way to the couple. "You look SO good, doesn't she, Fred?" She nudged her partner, giving him a knowing grin.

"I guess you look nice." His nonchalant reply was accompanied with a shrug.

"She looks breathtaking, actually." George's correction left me staring at him speechless. "Just like Angelina."

Oh well. "Yeah" I agreed, clinging onto my partner's forearm, finally getting a vague idea of what was going on —not quite there yet, though. "Angelina, love, you look astonishing, right George?"

"Right." I could see my friend's cheeks reddening ever so slightly whilst making eye contact with George.

"Shall we go in?" I suggested, already heading to the gates.

FRED'S P.O.V

'Breathtaking' was the exact word I was thinking about when Angelina asked me about Y/n, and George knew it.

The girls probably didn't catch how my jaw dropped when I saw her, but my brother did.

He knew it.

"Go with her, yeah?" I requested to Angelina, gesturing at Y/n and at the Great Hall simultaneously. "George, can I have a word with you?"

He nodded and whispered "Go on, ladies." before walking to me. "What is it, Freddie?"

"What's your game?"

"I think I don't follow." The fact that he had the nerve to speak that blantant lie angered me more than I would ever admit.

"Why is she your date?"

"Why is she not your date?" He retorted, triggering a gasp from me, followed by a scoff. "You're not only completely oblivious, you're also a coward."

"Beg your pardon?" Was the only thing I could bring myself to say; I blamed the shock caused by my brother's nonsense.

"AND you stole my date." Oh, so this was about Angelina. "Now if you excuse me," he patted my back a couple times. "I'll go dance all night with MY absolutely breathtaking date."

"Have fun with Slytherin girl, Georgie." I replied, sprinting to reach him. "I'll go dance with our beautiful Angelina."

"Tosser." I could hear him say as I jogged into the Hall to reach the girls.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

READER'S P. O. V.

George probably wasn't the best dancer, but he clearly knew some moves, and made me want to stay on the dancefloor for a good couple of hours, having a great time.

That's one of the reasons why I decided to help him out.

"Oi!" He leaned on and I stood on my tiptoes, holding onto his forearms so I could speak directly into his ear. "Wanna dance with Angelina?"

"Maybe" He slightly pulled away and both our gazes spotted the girl, dancing madly with Fred. "Yeah! Yeah I do!" He shouted so I could hear him over the music, now that we were apart.

"Alright, come!" I tugged his hand and together we narrowed the already short distance between them and us.

The timing was perfect, almost as if it was meant to be like that; the moment we reached them a slow song started to play.

"Angelina, may I steal your date for a dance?" I requested, not waiting for Angelina's nod before letting go of George and tugging Fred's hand. "You can have mine." I spared my friend a teasing smile and a wink while I pulled her date away from George and her.

"Stealing me away, huh?" Once we were far enough, I spun around and held up one of his hands, his left one falling on my waist and my right one on his shoulder. "Eager to be near me again, Y/l/n?"

"So I'm not 'Slytherin girl' anymore?" I raised my eyebrows at him with a smirk on my face as we swayed.

"You heard that?" All from sudden he turned somehow self-conscious.

"This may come as a shock to you," I peeked over his shoulder to check on George and Angelina. "but you two are quite loud."

"I didn't mean it." His word had way more regret than necessary for something as stupid as what he was sort of apologizing for.

"I know." My eyes returned to his just in time for him to made me twirl and pulling me back to him, this time a bit closer than we were before. "Asking Angelina out was a shitty move." I pointed out.

"You won't believe me," he began, "But I completely forgot." I snorted. "I swear!" His eyes widened and both our mouths twisted into an amused smile. "She was near me when Ron asked me who I'd be taking, and I didn't think twice."

A soft, genuine laugh escaped my lips; one which made the boy in front of me smile.

"Is he pissed?"

"Earlier? Very. Now?" I gestured behind Fred, urging him to look at his twin brother, now kissing Angelina. "I don't think so, no."

This time it was his laugh that made a smile tug the corners of my mouth.

"You do look breathtaking." He spoke quietly, almost in a whisper. "Dunno why I didn't tell you earlier."

"Because you're a twit." He chuckled, shaking his head with his eyes fixed on our feet. "You look very handsome, though."

"I am very handsome." He corrected me, looking at me again, now with that damn smug face.

Out of every possible comeback, I chose the one that he expected the least. "Yes, you are." His cheeks turned mildly red and his grin fluttered; I counted it as a win.

"You're beautiful." He returned the compliment, after a moment of silence, to which I responded with a confident 'I know'. "So cocky."

"That makes the two of us." I pointed out.

Silence fell among us again. Comfortable silence, though, one that I could get used to.

Another twirl, another pull to stand even closer.

A small lean was enough for my head to rest against his chest. I blamed tiredness for the need to do that, but I didn't find anything to blame for the way his heart was pounding against his chest, nor for that strange feeling in my stomach.

As soon as he took a deep breath, we both eased into each other's arms, giving up the tension that our bodies had held.

We stayed like that for a while, until I looked around and realized most people had left, George and Angelina included; the dancefloor was now almost empty.

"I don't know what time is it," I spoke, letting my fingertips trace random patterns over his shoulder, dancing down to his chest.

"Me neither" he spoke, making me sway.

"I reckon this is the longest we've been together without jumping down each other's throats." I observed. "And it's probably the longest—"

My words died when, without any kind of warning, his lips landed on mines.

His right hand unconsciously gripped mine for an instant with such force, almost as if it was holding onto it for dear life.

Before I could even think about kissing him back, he retreated back to his previous position, offering me a smile I couldn't decipher accompanied by a wink that made him look relaxed an confident.

All façade, I thought to my self, as he said nothing —no teasing, no cracking jokes; he just kept slowdancing, his hands now more loose, seeming like he was prepared for me to run away; his gaze was also casted down and his cheeks flushing.

I would have teased him if it wasn't for the way I felt my own face burning.

I did let go of his hold, and he subtly stepped back, lowering his arms.

Just like me, he didn't have time to react when I pulled him down, cupping his cheeks for a proper kiss, which he returned instantly.

I felt both his hands on my hips as he leaned on, drawing me against him as close as he possibly could, while my hands left his cheeks to circle his neck.

All of a sudden I remembered that I needed to breath; I broke away, leading my hands to his shoulders, where I could feel how heavy his breathing was.

"What's just happened?" I mumbled, my eyes fluttering open to look into his.

"Dunno." He confessed. "Did you like it?"

"Very much." I replied instinctively, not bothering on thinking it through.

"Wicked." He muttered against my lips before going in for the third kiss, this one more heated.

With a hand on his chest i slightly pushed him away, scanning the place around us before asking, "Wanna go for a walk around the castle?"

"Please." His response was so immediate that we both had to chuckle at it.

"Wicked." I mocked, earning a playful push from him. I my fingers interlaced with his and I led the way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

FRED'S P. O. V.

"Shhh!" I playfully shushed Y/n's giggles, loosely hugging her from behind with my lips pecking her shoulder as we went downstairs in the direction of her House. "You don't want us to get caught, do you?" I let go of her waist just when we found ourselves halfway through the corridor.

"Merlin's beard—" Y/n, who had turned to face me, widened her eyes at the sight of me under the dim lights of the dungeons. "You're a mess." She whispered between quiet laughs, raising her hands up to my face to try and remove some of the lipstick stains she had left all over me.

"Don't you dare laugh, woman." I feigned pain, only making her giggle more. "You made a mess out of me."

She held my chin and moved my face from side to side, checking if she had made it any better. "What am I supposed to do with your neck?" She huffed.

"Place a couple more kisses there?" I suggested with a smirk, fixing her hair as best as I could. "Or a bite, you choose."

"I'm serious." Her thumb gently rubbed the side of my neck, sending shivers down my spine.

"Let them there for people to see." I was joking. My tone was playful. I didn't really mean it.

It was just a joke, right?

Her hands slid down my chest before leaving my body. "I'd rather not to." She replied absent-minded, making me realize that maybe I wasn't joking; maybe I wanted people to see— to know.

She didn't, though.

"Hey, everything's alright?" She questioned, concern making its way to her face when her eyes found mines.

"Of course." I replied— no, I lied. I lied to her and to myself. "Just tired."

"No wonder why." She laughed at her own innuendo, but the only thing she got out of me was an unenthusiastic half smile. "I'm gonna head back now." She added, probably sensing something wasn't right. "Get some sleep."

"I'll go have a shower." I informed her, stepping back in the stairs' direction without breaking eye contact.

"See you in a couple of hours." She responded, mirroring my moves, but towards her common room.

I nodded briefly before heading up to my own House, craving a cold shower to shake her voice off my mind and detach her touch and kisses from my skin.

[kunstpause-archive]

Wip Wednesday

I am still writing bg3, have another snippet

Thank you @elveny​ @hobo-apostate​ @in-arlathan​ @ashalle-art​ and @noire-pandora​ for tagging me ❤

Astarion gives her a curious look. “I am not condemning you for the things you like. Not one bit,” he says, sounding remarkably earnest for a moment before a smile spreads over is face and he runs a teasing finger down between her collarbones. “After all, I share quite a few of your tastes, one way or another.”

“Yet you mock me endlessly.” Kara sighs. His touch sends goosebumps over her skin. “Am I really to believe you do not judge me?”

At that, Astarion lets out an amused snort. “Darling, I say what I say to you because you like it.” With a shrug he keeps skimming over her skin in featherlight touches as he continues, “Besides, I am willing to bet most of these things you tell yourself pretty regularly whenever you want to feel particularly bad about yourself.” 

Kara’s protest gets overruled by a soft moan as he cups her breasts and squeezes gently. 

“I am only telling you what you want to hear in the heat of the moment,” Astarion murmurs. “But I certainly don’t judge you for any of it.”

“That’s… a quite sophisticated sounding approach to the whole thing.” Kara tries her hardest to form a coherent answer under his terribly distracting touch.

“Well, what can I say?” Astarion chuckles. “I am a very sophisticated man.”

At his gleeful tone, Kara can’t help but scoff. “You are also a man who is very full of himself!”

He outright laughs now. “Actually, it would be you, that…” he starts and Kara scrambles up with a groan, stopping him mid-sentence by firmly clasping her hand over his mouth!

“Nonono, don’t you dare say it,” she huffs. “Not one more stupid joke!” 

She is waiting for him to give in when the way his eyes crinkle in amusement gives her pause, and a second later she draws her hand back with a small yell that is more shock than actual pain. Full of disbelief, she looks at the small bit of blood on her hand, where his fangs have cut into her skin.

“If you want to stop me from talking, you have to do way better than that, I’m afraid.” Astarion smirks at her before he lets himself fall back onto the bedroll and drags her on top of him. 

The small sting on her hand is already forgotten as Kara finds herself looking down at his infuriating, yet oh so inviting looking smile.

“I guess I have to switch bedrolls with Eris if I want to get away from your comments then,” she jokes, only to realize a second later that all she did was give him more ammunition.

“Are you sure you want to switch, though?” Astation’s voice is full of mischief as he winks at her. “Perhaps use the opportunity to ask for a sleep-over instead.”

When Kara simply narrows her eyes in annoyance, Astarion chuckles. He runs his hand over her back, following the line of her spine with his fingers to draw idle patterns on her skin.

“You know, you could just tell her you simply want to fuck her,” Astarion suggests bluntly before he gives her a telling look. “You’d be surprised how often that works.”

tagging, with no obligation of course @jentrevellan​ @jennserr​ @curiousthimble​ @cartadwarfwithaheartofgold​ @elfyourmother​ @allycryz​ @midnightprelude​ @anchanted-one​ @tishinada​ @queen-kass-the-writer​ @a-shakespearean-in-paris​ @wardenari​ @blarfkey​ @dalish-rogue​ @charlatron​ @coffeebird-eccentric​ @hollyand-writes​ @paisleybees​ @thefoxinboots​ @enigmalea​ @another-rogue-trevelyan​

and anyone I forgot who wants to do it. ❤

[wearevillaneve]

Killing Eve S3, E8: “Are You Leading or Am I?”  Follow the Misleader.

To be a fan of Killing Eve, you don’t have to suspend disbelief entirely, but you must do so frequently.   Otherwise, you’ll be constantly face-palming yourself over the some of the inane and banal bullshit the writers crap out.

All season long, the big mystery of Killing Eve’s third season was Who Killed Kenny?  In the final episode the answer was revealed the by Konstantin that Kenny was responsibly for his own death.. 

For reasons apparently unexplored until the final episode, a spy-cam set up by Bear to catch a candy thief  caught Kenny pilfering Bear’s candy of choice. but also walking out of the office with his possible papa, Konstantin.   When Eve arrives at The Bitter Pill to meet up with her last living friend in the world, she barely misses the sight of Kenny falling silently from the roof to his death. Bullshit. 

MI6 supposedly raided the offices of the Bitter Pill, but apparently are such fuck   ups they didn't find the hidden camera.   Meanwhile, Bear conveniently "forgot" it was there at all, but somehow grew a conscience to “out”  The Twelve,  MI6 and all the other intelligence  agencies playing slap and tickle with the feds.T

here is no way of knowing how much time has passed since he bit it, but Kenny’s has to have been gone for at least a month?   Nobody at The Bitter Pill even checked the spy-cam?  MI6 didn't find it when they raided the office? Ugh.  This was some half-assed, sloppy writing with no respect logic or the viewer’s intelligence. Double bullshit. Executive Producer Sally Woodward Gentle says Kenny didn’t commit suicide and Konstantin’s ass-covering excuse that he didn’t push him off the roof didn’t even sell Carolyn though she let him run off with his life.  Which means this wearisome plot will drag on into Season 4.  Not knowing when a story line is played out is a big weakness of the KE writer’s room.

Speaking of glaring weakness, enter Geraldine.  Hands down, the most useless and tedious character in the history of Killing Eve.  Even Frank “Dick swab” Haleton and poor, doomed Felix were less of an empty shell than the charmless Geraldine.   Every time she showed up on screen with her sad eyes and sadder expressions, I yawned and found myself yearning for a nice five-minute bloc of commercials.  Geraldine was that bad.

Hopefully, Gemma Whalen bought something nice for herself or paid off her credit card with the paycheck from playing a total blank like Carolyn’s desperate daughter.   Carolyn finally dismissed Geraldine and told her to fuck off back home. If only it had come a few episodes earlier it would have spared us all Geraldine’s blind alley of a plot device.

Rhian had the double audacity to show up where she wasn’t  wanted forcing Villanelle to send Eve away, then to add insult to injury, backed her against a subway wall and told Villanelle to mind her manners and do as instructed like the “sheep” she was.   A regretful Villanelle whispered, “I’m sorry” before she beat the stupid out of Rhian and kicked her onto the rails where the tram ended her bangs and boots forever.  The last thing to go through Rhian’s mind before the train did was, “Do not EVER interrupt Villanelle when she's slow dancing with her baby.”

Despite her reluctance to kill for The Twelve or MI6, Villanelle is more than capable of doing so when sufficiently motivated.   But even Villanelle no longer finds purpose and pleasure out of murder, Eve is beginning to and that may loom large on their relationship going into next season.   If Carolyn says forget about The Twelve, what’s Eve’s mission?   Go rogue and try to take them down with a shook, semi-retired assassin to back her play ? Or settle down for a life of sapphic bliss waking up next to Villanelle every morning? Dasha is dead and Paul is dead and Mo is dead and Rhian is dead  Geraldine and everybody at The Bitter Pill should be dead, but aren’t.   Of all the survivors of S3, Geraldine seems most likely to return in 2021 with Helene.  Maybe that’s when she flips on Carolyn and joins The Twelve to take her down.  That, or she’s the one who killed Kenny while Konstantin watched. 

Oh, fuck the plot.   It’s not as though it matters.   What matters is   Eve and Villanelle’s shared time together in S3 was so limited the moments they actually interacted can be summed up as The Bus Kiss, the Wave, the Dance and The Bridge. 

The Dance was sweet and tender, something that doesn’t happen often or last long on Killing Eve.  Sure enough, the all-too brief scene moved Eve along to fulfill a plot point and give Villanelle an opportunity to prove when it comes to taking someone out like a bag of dirty diapers, she definitely has “still got it.” Who didn’t like it like when Eve and Villanelle actually talked about how they got to this point as they stood on a green-screen bridge.   A confession of love or at least fond feelings would have been good and a long, lingering, eyes closed shut kiss would have made it perfect.   After two consecutive season ending episodes where one woman had gravely injured the other, another violent conclusion would have been too much to take.   Fortunately Suzanne Heathcote and her S4 successor, Laura Neal, wrote a final shot where Villanelle and Eve walk away and then turn to stare wistfully at each other.

It’s perfect.  I’m mystified how we got to this point though.  Eve’s turn from attempting to patch things up with Niko to falling back into obsession with Oksana is never explained.   Nor is there an event or a line that clears up why she was willing to leave Eve behind as part of Konstantin’s Cuba escape plan.  

We are left to make presumptions as to how Eve goes from "I'm totally done with her. done with that. end of story” to “when i try and think of my future, i just... see your face over and over again."   Here is where Heathcote’s choice not to explore Eve’s evolution comes back to bite S4. Despite the way our heartstrings are tugged when the two women realize they can’t deny the magnetism that keeps drawing them together, the impact of the event is blunted by all the rabbit holes the viewer had to go down to get here, and then it doesn’t feel entirely earned.  

The open-ended ambiguity of the finale will send fanfic writers scurrying to their computers to craft a more satisfactory alternative until Killing Eve returns in one or two years.

It’s going to be a long wait, but at least there’s some comfort to take from the fact instead of the dread of more pain and suffering that Villanelle and Eve have inflicted on each other, this time there’s real hope of a possible better days for them.

FINAL GRADE:  A- 

[riverboundao3ff]

Riverbound, Chapter 19

Your name is WANSHI ADYATA and you think you just walked in on a muscular theatre session between an alien, an oliveblood, and Lynera Skalbi.

The night had started out normally enough, except a little bit better than usual because one of your classes got canceled, which almost never happens! You decided to go see if Daraya wanted to finish creating her Soldier Purrbeasts OC with you, but she was busy because of her chores. That made you try to find Karako instead but one of the older girls told you he left earlier for church. Annoyed, you went off to the dining hall to grab a snack, only to run into Lanque. Lanque asked if you wanted to help make your friend calm the hell down.

And here you are.

“Polypa! Let go!” Micah cries, thrashing violently in the oliveblood’s arms. Wow, you’ve never seen a non-jadeblooded troll in the caverns before. “Put me-- why can’t I teleport? Why can’t I-!”

“You need to calm down!” Lynera begs, trying and failing to restrain the alien’s arms. She’s afraid of hurting them, but that means she isn’t using the strength she needs to subdue them.

“Calm down my ass!”

“Micah, we can’t let you go kill a god because you feel like it,” Polypa tries to reason. She tries to shoosh-pap them, only for them to rear back and kick at her kneecaps.

“He killed my friend! I will tear down this entire solar system!”

Hazel eyes flash pure green, and your bloodpusher starts to race in fear. You creep closer to Lanque, who’s been silent, but he doesn’t look afraid so you won’t be either. Friends being scared of each other isn’t what real friends do.

He clears his throat. Everybody stops what they’re doing and stares at him. “Micah, what was the first thing I said to you when we met at Ardata’s party?”

Micah blinks. “I, uh… you asked me why I look the way I do?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To distract you.”

In one swift movement, Polypa arranges them into a wiggler-carry in her arms and sits down on the loungeplank, holding them tight enough so they can’t escape.

“Traitor,” Micah growls.

“It’s only temporary, darling. As much as I’d love to help you wipe that Scratch bastard from the face of the multiverse for all he’s done, now is simply not the time. You’re in no shape to be doing something like that.”

“Or ever! Please don’t run off to fight a god!” Lynera pleads.

Lanque scoffs. “Well, I’d help you fight a god, even if she won’t. But I digress.”

“Lanque! Don’t give them ideas!”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up!”

“Or what? Going to cry about it, Ska-?”

“BOTH OF YOU ARE GIVING ME A FUCKING MIGRAINE. OH MY GOD. SOMETIMES I WISH ULTIMATE DIRK SNAPPED MY NECK WHEN HE HAD THE CHANCE. IF YOU BOTH DON’T SHUT UP I’M TELLING BRONYA YOU PITCH FLIRTED IN FRONT OF WANSHI. I AM SERIOUSLY AT MY LIMIT, FOLKS. SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.”

You stare in awe as Lanque, Lynera, and Polypa all back away as Micah leaps to their feet and bears down on Lanque with a furious snarl. “Do not antagonize Lynera!” They turn and point at the girl in question, who is trying to flatten herself into the wall while looking anywhere but at them. “Don’t tell me what to do! And you.” They glare down at Polypa. “If you ever restrain me like that again I’m breaking up with you.”

With that, they whirl around, storm up the stairs, and slam the door behind them hard enough for it to rattle on its hinges.

A moment of dead silence deafens everybody in the room.

“... Is it just me or was that kind of hot?” Lanque asks.

Lynera swallows nervously. “I think we broke them.”

Polypa nods, looking immensely sad and guilty.

You sigh. You know what you need to do. “I’m gonna go talk to them.”

All three of the grown-ups turn to look down at you.

“Are you sure, Wanshi? They seemed pretty upset.” Lynera says. She picks at a loose thread on her sleeve, one of her many nervous habits. “It might be best to just let them cool down.”

You cross your arms. “No! They just need somebody to actually listen to them. Bye!”

Lynera calls after you as you run up the stairs, but you’re on a mission and Wanshi Adyaya never fails a mission.

Their scent trail is super distinct ‘cause they don’t smell anything like a troll, so you’re able to follow it all the way back up to the main level, and then to the main entrance. You have to dodge a bunch of other girls who are going to class due to the fact that you’re supposed to be going to class… but you don’t really care. You’re doing something far more important than learning about stuff you can just ask Lanque about later.

Just as you reach the tunnel that leads to the outside world, the trail abruptly doubles back and you have to turn around. You walk along it patiently as it takes you to one of the offshoots that almost nobody knows about except you and a choice few others.

… You are SUNPETAL of SHADECASTE, and you are tracking down your wayward castemate after they ran away from a Gathering gone awry. TWINKLEMOON of STORMCASTE, former rogue turned popular caste-cat, must be found and comforted no matter what the cost! All five castes grieved as if they lost their own family after they mysteriously disappeared for half a sweep, presumed dead by all. That sort of thing must never happen again!

Sniffing the air, you confirm you’re on the right track and keep marching on into the dimly-lit tunnel. Fresh air blows over your face, bringing with it the odor of acid rain.

You find them curled up at the small opening, watching lightning crackle in the late evening sky.

“I know you’ve come and gone farther than most, Twinklemoon, but I’m afraid where you rest won’t give you any shelter from the storm,” you announce.

They shake their head as they gaze up at the dark clouds. “I fear no storm except the one inside me, Sunpetal.”

“Storms can be scary,” you agree. “And yet rain gives life to plants and animals, and the wind blows away the sorrows of yesterday, and the lightning starts fires that clear away dead vegetation so that new forests may grow in its stead.”

“So there is beauty in suffering?”

“No. But there’s always hope.”

Micah looks back at you, sighs, and hops down from the ledge, closing the hatch behind them as the first drops of acid rain begin to fall. One lands on their arm, and they wipe at it with an absent grunt of pain.

“Try not to be too angry with them,” you tell them. “They want to help you, and they really care about you-- we all do. We just don’t know how to show it. You’re not a troll, so yeah.”

“... You don’t have to involve yourself in this kind of stuff, Wanshi,” they say quietly.

You huff. “Well, I want to be involved. I’m part of the rebellion, too.”

They grin, something in their eyes softening. “I know.”

“Are you mad ‘cause you’re hurting?”

“... Yeah. I’m… not well, Wanshi. My brain isn’t, anyways.” They sit down on the carpet and pull their bony knees up to their chest. “I don’t know exactly how trolls behave in response to trauma, but for humans we have flashbacks to the event that hurt us, and we get angry for no good reason, and sometimes when we’re angry we accidentally hurt the people around us.”

“How are you gonna get better?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to get worse before I get better.”

“Because you don’t know how to get better.”

“Exactly.”

You think about that, and then you think about what you could say to make them feel a little better. “Sometimes Karako gets angry because he’s super smart but he can’t communicate like you or I do. That doesn’t mean he deserves to be lonely. It just means we each have to work a little harder to understand what’s going on.”

Micah turns to face you, pale brows furrowing. “Wanshi? How smart is Karako?”

“Wellllll… he can draw really well. And he always knows what people are feeling! Like, he always knows what’s going on when I talk to him. I don’t really know how to explain it, but I think the way his brain works lets him understand things a little differently. Not more or less, just… different,” you explain.

“... Huh.”

“What I’m trying to say is that you should talk to us more. Maybe you’re a pale slut, but you’re our pale slut, so we want to hear about your problems!” you declare.

They burst out laughing and fall back, throwing an arm over their face. “Oh, geez, don’t let Bronya hear you talk like that!”

You blow a raspberry at them. “I’m gonna be a teenager in a few sweeps! I don’t care what Bronya thinks!”

“I know.”

“Or Lynera.”

“Alright, alright. Thanks for talking with me, Wanshi.”

“No problem! Just promise that you’ll keep talking to us so we can help you.” You hold out your “pinkie finger” as they call it, and they reach out to link it with their own. “No more secrets.”

A flash of something like pain darkens their eyes for a split second, but it comes and goes so quick you’re honestly not sure if you even saw anything at all. “... Okay.”

“Good. Wanna go back to the others and get your moirail out of here? It’s kind of illegal for anybody except jadebloods to be here.”

Hazel eyes grow round. “Oh, shit, I completely forgot about that.”

The both of you run all the way back to Lynera’s study, but you can’t stop giggling at Micah’s little utterances of “Shitshitshitshitshitshit--” under their breath. Something about them reminds you of a fussy baby purrbeast.

The next several minutes of your life are very entertaining.

“Polypa! Why are you here? It’s illegal!” Micah yells as they tear down the stairs to Lynera’s study at maximum velocity. “It’s illegal!”

You watch as the two start squabbling. Polypa is on the verge of a messy breakdown because hello, her moirail just threatened to break up with her, Micah is yelling at her for risking her life by being in the caverns, Lanque has somehow gotten a bag of chips and is munching away while looking totally enthralled by the whole mess, and Lynera keeps trying to no-clip through the floor. That or she’s constipated, you don’t know for sure.

“Can I have one?” you ask Lanque.

He passes you the bag, never taking his eyes off Micah and Polypa. “Wanshi, what you’re seeing right now is the reality of serious relationships. It is also the highest form of entertainment known to trollkind.”

“Lanque, that’s our friend and their moirail, not entertainment!” Lynera hisses.

“My dearest Lynera, I said their situation is funny, not the people themselves. There’s a difference.”

“Not really!”

“Oh, shush. You wouldn’t know what humor is if it slapped your ass and insulted your lusus.”

“And you wouldn’t know what being a decent person is like if it put you on evenings for the rest of the sweep for cavern duties.”

Oh, boy. You lean back as Lanque turns to glare at Lynera with utter disdain, but thankfully Micah and Polypa put a stop to the fistfight that would no doubt have happened by wrapping up their argument.

“Well, I’ve just received word that an old associate who makes electro-bombs is back in town from vacation. I think I’m going to pay him a visit,” Polypa huffs, brushing by Micah with her head held high.

They splutter. “Fine! You do that. A-And be careful!”

“I will!”

“Good!”

“Text somebody we both know as soon as you leave so I know you’re safe!”

“Fine! I was going to do that anyways.”

“You better.”

Polypa slams the door behind her, only to reemerge and glare around the corner at her moirail. “Love you. Take a shower.”

She runs off before Micah can get the last word.

“What’s up with everybody telling me to take a shower!” they yell, throwing their hands up in the air. “I try, okay? Not my fault I’m a stinky little human!”

“Do you want to use my shower?” Lynera offers.

“... Yeah. Thanks.”

You nod, satisfied. “My work here is done.”

Deciding Micah is in good hands and that Lanque and Lynera aren’t going to rip each other’s throats out, you race up the stairs and out of the study to go find the scary oliveblood girl who is also somehow your alien friend’s moirail.

There’s something you need to ask her.

By the time you catch up to her she’s already out of the caverns and making her way down the trail to the city, but you don’t let that stop you. Her legs are way longer than yours, so you have to jog to keep up.

She gives you a confused look as you fall into step alongside her. It’s always been pretty funny to you how other castes really have no idea how to interact with trolls younger than them. “Uh, aren’t you supposed to be back underground?”

“My bio class doesn’t start for another half hour. I gotta ask you something.”

“Yeah?”

“So, I wanna fight too, right? Like, in the rebellion with you guys! But Lanque says I’m too young. So can you tell me how I can be a part of everything, too?”

Polypa slows before coming to a halt. “Kid, look. As much as I’d happily shove Bombyx off a rooftop, I have to say he’s in the right about this one. You should feel lucky you have a reason to not get involved in all this shit.”

Anger makes your lips curl up. “Wow. And I thought you might actually be cool.”

“Manipulation doesn’t work on me, but nice try.”

“Come on, you have to give me something!”

“... How about this?” She squats down a little to look you in the eye. “Go enjoy your wigglerhood for all the kids who don’t get to. It’ll be over before you know it, believe me. Have fun, make a lot of friends, see if there are any other jades who might be interested in making the world a better place. It’s the little things that count.”

She’s gone before you can respond, and then it’s just you and the steady patter of rain that’s starting to sting your skin.

You don’t even bother to pretend to listen to Lynera’s scolding as she meets you at the cave entrance with a towel. Polypa’s words ring around the insides of your pan like church bells.To be more specific, the last thing she said.

You’re still wet when you go to class with a towel around your shoulders and without a single bit of motivation to actually listen to the instructor, but for the first time since this whole thing started, a little spark of hope warms you from the inside out.

Your name is Wanshi Adyata, and you’re going to lead the first jadeblood rebellion in Alternian history.

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E73 (Aug. 6, 2019)

Gooooooood evening good evening good evening all! @eponymous-rose is off packing for a cross-country move (as if THAT’S an excuse), so here I am isntead to lay waste to all you love. 

Tonight’s preroll: Sam’s costume from the liveshow getting dunked in acid.

Tonight’s guests: Laura Bailey & Sam Riegel, in a fully human and normal tshirt and jeans. Everyone oohs and ahs over Laura’s adorable live show outfit; Sam waits eagerly for equal attention. And waits, and waits...

Tonight’s announcements: Huge thanks to everyone who came out to the live show in Indy last weekend (I was there! It was great!). Laura talks about everyone singing the theme on the intro. Sam sent his entire costume back with Dani so he wouldn’t get stopped in the airport. Poor Dani! Season 3 of Between the Sheets, featuring Amanda Palmer, is up for Twitch subs now and will be up on YT on Wednesday. CR is headed to Austin, TX, for a live show on Sept. 23! Everyone talks about how Doty will definitely, definitely be in this show: The Adventures of the Darrington Brigade, ft. the return of Sam as Taryon. Sam says he already has something in mind for his costume; everyone else will be playing new characters. Laura’s got an idea for a backup character for Jester, but BWF advises her not to use this for the live show since Jester will def be dead in less than 20 episodes. Go to critrole.com/events for more.

Episode 73: Uthodurn, which is not spelled at all like I thought

CR Stats! Nott dealt 124 damage this episode, only 23 of which was friendly fire. Sam: “You know, he just needs to get out of the fucking way.” Nott rolled her 50th nat 20, resulting in a 43 stealth check. Laura and Sam quietly talk about Sam’s tendency to touch everyone else’s dice as opposed to his “playing fairly.” Sam also laments he’s lost his dustbuster in the studio somewhere after the last bit. Jester is tied with Beau at 9 for the most HDYWTDTs. Jester also played her 50th prank this episode: creating the ballpeen hammer as an offering to the Allhammer.

Laura thinks part of Jester’s new anger in battle is part of losing Yasha, especially when she disappeared right in front of her and Jester wasn’t able to help her at all. “Jester mammoth-raged.” Laura raves about being a mammoth & talks about needing to work on her elephant noise. Both Laura and Sam fail miserably at making the noise.

Sam slowly drinks a shot. It’s... a thing.

We have a close-up of Sam’s nail polish, which was done for the live show. He doesn’t own nail polish remover, it turns out.

Nott will talk to Cad about the explosive arrow whenever Cad brings it up. First, Cad was invisible & therefore at fault because he couldn’t be seen; the second part of the blame goes to Laura Bailey, who leaned over and told Sam right before his turn he had to kill this thing right now. The explosive arrow was the best thing he had; Sam accepts one part of the blame for forgetting it would be fire. Sam & Laura agree the bolt should have had some thunder/force damage associated with it because of the concussive blast. (Hilariously, my father presented this precise argument to me with GREAT VIGOR right after this episode aired.)

Jester’s call to the Traveler was just in the heat of the moment. All of her power comes from him, so Jester calls out to him (and Laura thinks it cool) when she gets a big oomph. Sam wonders aloud if her powers genuinely come from the Traveler or not. Laura: “I mean...as far as she knows.” Sam’s also distracted that the question card had a straight-up name on it rather than a username.

Sam considers the outcome of the election a win, since he’s one of the bi-Presidents of D&D Beyond until further notice. “It doesn’t matter how you get there, as long as you get there.” Laura asks if he thinks about it being a hollow win when he goes to sleep. Sam: “Do I look like the kind of person to have thoughts as I’m falling asleep?”

Nott’s usage of the pistol’s single shot was pure pettiness. Sam thought Nott had a shot because she’s acrobatic & fast & has some tricks, and he just didn’t want Beau to win. Making loud noises & drawing attention didn’t even cross my mind.

Jester was very proud of Fjord making those strength checks, but she wasn’t surprised. “He’s very strong, even though he looks like he’s not.” Laura thinks it’s funny and poetic that Travis rolled so well after ditching his sword/powers.

Travis has three sets of dice. Liam has a bunch of sets, but they’re all red (says Laura, offended). Laura only used purple dice at the live show because of how she was dressed.

Cosplay of the Week: a great Scanlan cosplay with Ioun’s third eye by @cxptaingrayson.

Sam realizes something that’s been holding back the Nott-Fjord relationship is that Nott has always been a little suspicious of Fjord. Now that he’s “talking like a real weirdo” and is still brave, braver than before, she can trust him more.

Laura’s asked about Jester’s conflict between healing & DPS. Laura: “Do you think Jester asked to be a fucking healer?” When they were deciding their characters, Laura was originally going to be a warlock with the Traveler as her patron; then Travis was like, warlock! What a cool class! Can I have it? And Laura said sure, she’ll be a cleric, that sounds cool. “And now he got rid of his fucking patron! Who knows if he’s going to be a warlock anymore? What a waste of a warlock!” She likes being a cleric--but even from Jester’s very first inception she’s always been a healer who hates healing. Brian: “She’s a battle Mercy.” She’s not regretful she healed Beau; the reason Laura didn’t immediately heal her is that she thought from Matt’s face that the remorhaz was very close to death, closer than it actually was. She confirms Jester is Chaotic Neutral.

Brian tells Laura he texted Travis to tell him Laura accused him of stealing the warlock class. Laura: “YOU DID NOT!” Brian: “You said it on the air!!”

Travis, via text to BWF, apparently in all caps: “I WAS CHANGING RONIN. YES I STOLE WARLOCK.”

Nott’s teasing of a powerless Fjord is 100% just because she thinks it’s funny. Sam: “There’s not really a deep reason to it. They tease each other all the time. Why would that change just because he tossed his sword in the lava?”

Laura needs to do research on other animals she can become since she enjoyed the mammoth (and giant eagle) so much. Sam keeps a list of flying creatures Laura can turn into because Laura struggles looking it up and often keys it into her D&D Beyond app before she’s even started. BWF: “This is uncharacteristically unselfish.” Sam: “Well, Laura is--I love her. Laura is pure harp music and I would do anything for her.”

Their environments are just getting better and better for Nott in terms of how goblins are seen. She’s given up the mask now, but it’s nice to have people look and not scream.

Both Sam & Laura pause to fan over the design of Uthodurn. It’s way cooler than either the Empire or Dynasty to them right now.

Laura points out that Nott has been fairly outgoing lately; it’s been a while since anyone said “you’re a goblin, stone her!” She’s beginning to come out of her shell as she gets used to her body (not that she likes it in any way), but it’s a development from Veth’s original shyness. She’s also drunk a lot; Sam says this will continue until he gets more Laura Bailey speeches.

BWF still has Laura’s copy of Game of Thrones, which he borrowed in 2011. Laura doesn’t listen to books on tape because she likes the inflections in her own head.

Fanart of the Week: a cool grouping of portraits of the M9 by @dylanbydoodles.

They apparently threw an election party after the D&D Beyond President reveal. Sam talks about convincing the Lyft driver on the way back that it was a swinger’s party in the most ridiculous way possible. Poor Indianapolis.

Nott & Veth’s relationship is getting very complicated. Sam says they’re beginning to blend a little together, but he’s now coming to realize there’s a part of Nott deep down that is deeply scared of going back to Veth & losing her rogue abilities, her adventuring; she wants to be herself again for sure, since her body is definitely wrong, but she’s beginning to fear the loss of some of what Nott is now.

BWF sincerely thanks Sam for the effort and thought he puts into his character. Sam sincerely thanks him. It’s a lovely moment.

Jester’s slip about Fjord’s powers was deliberate on Laura’s part but accidental on Jester’s. Everyone’s a little worried about Fjord without powers, even though he proved himself in the remorhaz fight. She thinks the slipup happened because Jester wasn’t on guard--because Fjord had done so well in the fight, she’d forgotten.

So far, Nott’s choice to leave the family behind in Nicodranus is worth it; no one’s died and they’re making headway on their goals.

BWF: “The Mighty Nein: no one’s died-ish.”

Apparently Matt owns the building they’re filming in? I missed part of this and genuinely can’t tell if it’s a joke.

BWF talks about how Liam, Matt, & Travis have all been genuinely mad at him before. Matt and Travis were mad; Liam was just disappointed.

How did Sam lose the election? He doesn’t think it’s because of him or anything he did. He thinks there’s a demographic shift in America; the electoral college hurt him; both he and Liam ran the campaigns they wanted. Liam’s was serious issues & serious passion, while Sam farted around for three months. BWF asked Adam Bradford at D&D Beyond, who’s the General Manager, about the results; apparently the pie chart was VASTLY in favor of Liam with only the tiniest sliver for Sam. Laura thinks it’s because Sam’s done nothing but troll Sam for five years and this was their chance to troll him back. Sam: “To that I say: good job.”

Dani & Max both voted for Sam. Laura didn’t vote. BWF voted for Liam. Chris forgot there was a vote. Zach voted for Liam.

Sam talks about the game they play, the app for D&D Beyond, and how the whole campaign allowed him to shine a spotlight on himself. “I didn’t get as many votes as Liam, but I got a lot of attention.”

Everyone loved this last live show. Laura legit loved wearing her dress; Travis & Liam looked great. Tal looked normal. Brian marvels at his own tattoos. He and Tal went through a lot of ideas before they committed to the bag situation--he sent it to Jaimie Alexander before the show happened so she could vet it. Ha! “Her response was 25 crying emojis and ‘please send this to my boyfriend.’“

Reminder: Mica Burton, Overwatch League host (and daughter of Levar Burton), will be guest-starring on Critical Role this coming Thursday.

And we’re out! Is it Thursday yet?

[sepiadice]

DiceJar Campaign 0.3: Holes, Doors, and Blood (2020/03/13)

Finally killed my first PC as a GM!

Yup… Wasn’t intentional but… well, dice made things interesting, so I have to work with it.

We also didn’t have our rogue, which is unfortunate as she’s an enjoyable member, and also there were a lot of traps and locks this time.

The content went through almost the remainder of what was prepared for the previous session. I’d like to get through the content a little faster so the group can move on to actual role-play opportunities, instead of dungeon crawling. It’s an unfortunate result of my experimental Game Mastering a Module, and I’ll likely try and stick to homebrew in the future.

Or, at least, look for modules with more emphasis on socializing.

I did a medium job preparing this session. I got complacent and let the session slip far to the back of my mind leading up. I found my sweet spot session 2, so I need to keep that standard.

Cast

Mogui (IndigoDie): Druid. Does what he’s told by his employer. Indigo has played this module before. Yot (LimeDie): Cleric. Looking to redeem himself for past failures. Lime will commit to bits. Bernard 'Bean' Dipp (NavyDie): Ranger. Trying his best despite being so young. Navy doodles when he’s bored. Delilah Dunford (VermilionDie): Rogue. Searching for an identity beyond her family. Vermilion could not make this session. Game Master (SepiaDie/me): The world (a dusty, dusty world). The walls probably have stories to tell. I’m desperately trying to keep ahead with drawing the map.

Session Three

We reopen in the loot room we ended in the last session. Navy is given his rewards and I expound on the uses of the various items they received.

Now given the opportunity to read his letter, Navy delays long enough to wonder if he’s chosen to make Bean illiterate, but eventually he takes to giving the description: his mother wrote it, opening with a joke, and giving random updates about life in town despite the letter needing to have been placed before the arrival of the party, but it’s an opportunity for the players to expound on their families, so maybe his mother is a little airheaded?

The letter canonizes a High School which has a football team and a glee club. Will anything come of it? Probably not. Did I say with a sigh ‘Guess that’s canon now…’? You bet I did! Always say yes! Improv!

The party headed back into the room with the pool, tested the other door to find it locked, and moved towards the wailing.

The chamber to the East of the entrance contained several walls crisscrossing. A door stood locked to the south. The puzzle of this room is walking around various hidden pit traps while finding three switches that must be held down at the same time to unlock the exit. I originally ruled the switches take a few minutes to reset so the party can run to get to the door, but then I remembered Delilah is technically still there, so I reverted it to operate as written.

Bean and Yot both took turns falling in holes as Mogui moved around cautiously and managed to jump clear of the one pit he did accidentally trigger.

The three maneuvered around the chamber until they found the necessary switches, activated them, and Delilah held open the door so they could get through.

Walking through the next hallway, they finally reached the door for the room from whence the wailing was emitting.

They all decide to ignore it.

Which means they’ve skipped some plot exposition. Oh well, keep rolling and adapt.

Instead, they go down a fork and into an empty room, which formerly held a giant beetle, but I cut that combat as being wholly unnecessary. Instead, our party continues through into the next chamber, which has a fight I did not cut, as I thought it would have narrative value.

A fire pit smolders in the center of the room, a charred corpse within. Upon the arrival of our party, a dark apparition arises and squares up to fight our heroes.

Bean had acquired an Oil of Magic Weapon, granting his bow Plus-One Status, and rendering it a magic attack, so he’s able to harm the shadow.

Yot, meanwhile, uses Holy Flame. Fun fact about our apparition: it was born because a pyrophobic man burned alive in a structure already pretty rife with necromantic energies. That terror and agony was all it took to create the shadow.

So the enemy is real mad at being set on fire, sending out psionic screams for flavor.

Mogui just watches the fight.

After a few rounds of Magic Bow and holy flames, the Shadow perishes. Victory music for everybody!

The party leaves the room, continues to ignore the terrified wails, and enters the last available door.

Within is a round, domed room, with a wooden pillar, standing on an outcrop over a pit at the center of the room, that fires blunted arrows. This is felt to be rather unpleasant, and the party discusses how to deal with it.

Eventually, they check out the door, and find a mechanism built into it.[1] The party attempts to break the mechanism.

Bean then enters, and is pelted by blunt arrows. He walks around and tries to open a southern exit, finding it to be locked, so Bean attempts to approach the trap. Unfortunately, he takes enough nonlethal damage to get knocked out. Whoops.

After waiting for the mechanical whirring to stop, the other two call after Bean, receiving no response. So they cautiously enter.

The trap is now docile. And the southern door is unlocked.

So, what happened here, by the text of the module, is that the trap keeps running for ten rounds, at which time it’ll be exhausted of arrows, and the south exit will automatically unlock. The hope was the party would take the tower shields from the wood golem of last session to block the arrows.

Because of how they broke the activating mechanism (as they snapped off the metal arm in the door hinge that turned the machine off and on), I decided that now once it turned on, it couldn’t turn off. So after Bean was knocked out, the trap kept running until it ran out of rounds.

Don’t ask how the trap’s supposed to keep pelting adventurers inside the chamber after the door closes. Magic I guess.

Stop asking how traps work.

Mogui investigated the south exit while Yot checked on Bean. The door was, of course, unlocked, to the annoyance of Navy, and Yot was taking his sweet time healing Bean, but soon the party was on their feet again and ready for whatever came next.

The final room of the floor widened as it went, the ceiling supported by four columns. Stairs to the south lead to the… basement? Second basement? The crypt’s already underground, so what terminology applies here, I’m not…

Also, there’s two statues in recesses of the south wall. The Module text doesn’t call any attention to them, but they’re probably Kassen.

Our heroes enter this room, get to approximately the middle of the room, and four skeletons, with talon-like clawed fingers and blood dripping from their bones, step out from behind the columns, and menace the heroes.

Combat begins.

As does a series of horrible rolls from both parties. Just a lot of do-nothing turns. Yot tries to bash the skeletons and misses, Bean fires arrows and the closest he got sent the arrow through the ribcage of one skeleton. The skeletons weren’t faring much better, three of them crit fumbling at some point, which I interpreted them as falling prone for a turn.

The rolls were so bad I gently reminded my party that I set up a dice-roll bot in the Discord channel, if they wanted to put Roll20’s die-roller into dice prison. They didn’t go for it.

Back and forth the combat went, the skeletons getting a couple lucky hits on Bean. Eventually, and tragically, those lucky hits added up and Bean hit zero. Navy started making Death Saves, a realm where the exhaustingly low rolls followed and brought him to his death.

NavyDie then spent the rest of the combat doodling an increasingly elaborate death scene, with grave stone, candles, what was either a pentagram or an alchemy circle,[2] and death himself. Whatever self-amusement was needed.

As a narrative-first GM, Player Characters dying in combat is not something I enjoy. I am now in an awkward position of needing to figure out how to proceed and keep Navy involved. If he still wishes to play, of course. A couple options immediately spring to mind: bringing in a new character will be narratively awkward at this point, as we need to justify why the ignorant town would send back up, or why a kid is running so late; there’s an available NPC I could give Navy, but he’d be an odd (but doable) add; or, and this is an idea I like most, I can bring Bean back for a price…[3]

But I need to talk it through with NavyDie first.

Back to those still alive.

Mogui maneuvers to keep a safe distance, eventually coaxing one of the four skeletons back to the previous room, running a circle and returning to the main combat room, closing the door behind him. I rolled a die to determine the nature of the skeletons, and concluded they’re running on animalistic instinct, and thus can’t operate a door.

Also, this cuts down on enemies to delay the fight and rewards IndigoDie for clever problem solving.

Yot, growing tired of not hitting with his Mace, starts using Holy Flame again, forcing the Skeletons to use the horrible dice rolls to avoid damage instead of Yot using the same rolls to cause damage. Progress starts to get made.

Mogui turns into a tiger and starts running about and attempting to hit the skeletons, but still no luck.

There’s also some talk about how the skeletons aren’t taking attacks of opportunity, which had a very elegant explanation: I totally forgot about that mechanic, and I also just plain hate attacks of opportunity. They feel cheap and punish players for not carefully considering every minutiae of their actions.[4]

Eventually, the skeletons are finally either redead, or trapped in another room.

With one dead, the remaining three party members stare towards the stairs to the next floor. As the only escape is to fight the skeleton in the previous room, they mostly consider what difficulty they’re prepared to face.

Of the three sessions played thus far, this one felt of middle quality. I forgot to read my opening crawl text, and I waited until the last minute to write notes for the remainder of the floor (after copying over the leftovers from session two). Neither the combat with the Shadow (where I forgot to implement the smoke in the eyes mechanic the module wanted me to) or the Bloody Skeletons (with horrible dice rolls)[5] felt particularly fun or worthwhile. I’ll probably look to cut more superfluous fights going forward.

I’m also looking forward to moving out of the dungeon. I am learning a lot, as was my goal with running this module, but I’m missing being able to Role-Play as GM.[6] I’m certainly learning to answer questions the text didn’t bother to address, and also how annoying module formatting can be with where it explains things.

When I find time, I should sit down and design a dungeon of my own. That would also be a good learning experience, and also let me feel more at ease with making world-based rulings on the fly and implement elements I like and minimize those I don’t.

There’s just so much combat and map-based traps written in this thing. Makes it too difficult to abstract out the traps and rely on theater of the mind.

Most important take away: Attacks of Opportunity are dumb, and I hereby houserule them away.

I’ve already set things in motion for fun plot developments after this session’s events and feedback received, and hopefully the next write-up will come in about two weeks.

Until next time, may your dice make things interesting.[8]

-

[1] The party is really interested in the actual mechanics of these traps, which the module doesn’t explain, forcing their poor GM to try and reverse engineer it, and maybe I need to start shrugging and saying ‘I dunno, magic I guess.’ [2] Which is a good way to lose a sibling. [3] Just sent Navy a text asking if he’d like a level of Warlock. This could be fun. [4] Also, my experience with another player exploiting the mechanic to attempt to kill me. [5] Though based on his recap, IndigoDie enjoyed the combat for the bad rolls? Interesting guy. It felt like a bad joke that kept repeating to me, and I failed to improvise an Out for those involved. [6] Especially since Indigo sidestepped the opportunity I did have![7] [7] Whatever. Gives me time to give the man a less stupid name. [8] Despite working it into the opening, this sign off still doesn’t sit right. Feels too long… Magazines have little icons to mark the end. Maybe I should do the same?

[queenofcats17]

Shawn And His Inky Son 2

@bornoffireandwisdom asked for another story involving Grant and Shawn and I am happy to deliver. I’ve decided to make it a continuation of Shawn And His Inky Son, since it deals with Grant and Shawn again.

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

As happy as Shawn was to have Grant with him, surviving in the studio was still hard. Scavenging for food was difficult, especially with the roaming bands of Searchers. Grant could protect Shawn when there were just a few Searchers, but large groups tended to overwhelm his own will with the Searcher hivemind. It might have been easier if Shawn had just left him in the office. Shawn wasn’t going to leave him alone, though. Grant got sad and panicky when he was alone for too long, always worried that something had happened to Shawn. It made them both feel better to be together. 

Although, Shawn’s steadfast determination to keep Grant with him...Often ended up putting him in danger. Just as it had this day.

Shawn was getting ready to go on another supply run. He’d just about run out of bacon soup, which was pretty much the only thing in the studio to eat.

“Alright, ready for another adventure?” He asked, slipping on his bag and picking up the pipe he most often used as a weapon. Grant immediately perked up, rising out of the puddle he’d been in. 

“Whe...re?” He trailed after Shawn to the elevator. 

“Probably just the Heavenly Toys area or level P,” Shawn said. “Wouldn’t want to run into Alice or Drew.” He spat their names as though they were poison.

“Bad...” Grant agreed, screwing his face up. Joey’s name didn’t draw up good memories for him. Joey didn’t draw up good memories for anyone, really. And Alice was just mean. 

“Exactly.” Shawn nodded, pressing the button for Level K. In addition to looking for bacon soup, he also wanted to collect a few of his unfinished plushes. It got boring sitting in that office all day. He needed something to occupy his time. Grant was more than happy to just chew on a bone or a shoe, so he didn’t need all that much entertainment. 

The elevator began to lurch upwards with a sickening creak, which made Shawn tense. Shawn hated using the elevator. Tom had been right about it being unreliable. Even when the studio had been working, the elevator had always had mechanical issues. And now that the mechanics had been turned into ink creatures...Well, the elevator wasn’t really getting any maintenance anymore. 

But the elevator was enclosed and much safer than just trudging up the stairs, where they could encounter rogue Searchers or Butcher Gang clones. It was easier to haul big things in the elevator as well. Besides, it wasn’t like Grant could use stairs. If Shawn wanted to keep Grant with him, he had to use the elevator. And he did want to keep Grant with him.

Suddenly, the speakers in the elevator crackled to life, and to Shawn’s horror, a familiar voice spoke through them. 

“Well well well, hello, Mr. Flynn. I’m surprised to see you out of your little hidey-hole.”

“I’m not in the mood, Alice,” Shawn growled. He knew better than to call her Susie. Doing that would result in a meltdown of epic proportions from her.

“Oh, but I think you are,” she purred. The elevator shrieked to a stop. She’d been kind enough to stop them between floors, so there was no danger of them getting attacked. But she still had a captive audience. Grant squeaked, hugging Shawn’s leg.

“Sca...ry...” He whimpered.

“It’s okay,” Shawn whispered. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“Aaaw. You’re talking to it like it’s still a person,” Alice cooed, her voice cloying sweet. “That’s cute.”

“He is still a person,” Shawn snapped. 

“Are you sure?” Alice asked innocently. “Are you absolutely certain that the creature beside you is still Grant Cohen?”

“Of course, I am.” Shawn instinctively pulled Grant closer. Grant let out another whimper. He didn’t like the tone in Alice’s voice. 

“And what makes you so sure exactly?” Alice asked. “That it can mimic speech? That it ‘knows’ your name?”

“I’m serious, Alice. I’m not in the mood.” Shawn felt his heartbeat beginning to speed up. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want Alice to give voice to all the fears that lurked in the back of his mind. 

“Grant Cohen is dead, Mr. Flynn,” Alice continued with malicious glee. “I imagine you watched him die, didn’t you?”

“Stop it!”

“That thing next to you is nothing but a sentient pile of ink. Maybe a reanimated corpse if I’m being generous. Certainly not Grant Cohen, though. Not anymore.”

“Stop talking!” Shawn roared, covering his ears. 

Grant pressed closer to Shawn, starting to get concerned. Why was Shawn getting so upset? What was Alice saying? He could hear her voice, but her words were indistinct and muffled. She had such a lovely voice, but it sounded...cruel.

“It’s hardly healthy to be galavanting around with a corpse, Mr. Flynn,” Alice cooed. “Especially when you’re pretending it’s still the person you know. They make horror moves about that sort of thing.”

“Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up!” Shawn screamed. Grant whimpered, hugging Shawn’s leg. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like seeing Shawn so upset.  

“It might even be Joey stringing you along. Have you considered that?” Alice asked. “He controls all the ink, after all. He could just be luring you into a false sense of security so that it will be even more wonderful for him when he finally destroys you.”

Unfortunately for Alice, this didn’t have the effect she’d hoped. Instead of yelling or blowing up, Shawn slowly lowered his hands and smirked at the camera she was watching through. 

“It’s been months,” He snorted derisively. “Joey’s impulse control isn’t that good.” The thought had crossed his mind before, that this was just Joey stringing him along. But there was no way Joey would wait this long. If it really was Joey puppeting Grant, he would have pounced far sooner. Delayed gratification wasn’t something that Joey was at all a fan of. He’d been a nightmare to work for, certainly, unable to wait for anything. 

Alice was silent because she knew Shawn was right. Joey would never have waited this long. Perhaps that hadn’t been the best path to take. She’d been doing so well. Suggesting Joey’s involvement had been a misstep. 

“Maybe I was wrong about that,” she finally said, her voice soft as silk. “But I’m right about the rest. That thing is not Grant Cohen. Grant Cohen is dead. You can play house with it for as long as you like, but eventually, it’s going to end up killing you.”

“He’s not going to kill me.” Shawn narrowed his eyes at her, but she could tell she’d hit a nerve by the way his jaw clenched. 

“Maybe it’s fine now, but as soon as you run into more Searchers, it’ll turn on you,” Alice hummed. “Joey’s little hivemind is rather strong, after all. Your pet doesn’t stand a chance against it.”

The speakers crackled off and the elevator began to move once more. Shawn muttered some insult under his breath. 

“Ok...ay...?” Grant asked, tugging at Shawn’s pant leg. 

“I’m fine. Don’t worry.” Shawn patted his head. He would have preferred not to have that confrontation with Alice, but he could deal with it. It wasn’t like she could actually do anything to him. They all knew she didn’t leave her level. All she could do was play mind games. 

“Alright, here we are,” he said as the elevator reached level K. Grant made a happy noise, oozing out. That happy noise trailed off as he noticed the stairs leading up to the Heavenly Toys area. 

“Oh shoot.” Shawn grimaced. “Sorry, forgot about those stairs.” 

Internally, he was beating himself up. How had he forgotten about the stairs?! He’d worked here for years! He’d have to leave Grant to get the soup and plushes from his workshop. If he left Grant, he’d be unprotected. But Grant would also be unprotected and susceptible to being dragged into Joey’s hive mind. He could try carrying Grant, but that would occupy both his hands and leave him unable to defend himself. There was also the possibility of the ink soaking through his shirt sleeves or getting on his bare forearms. He had to leave Grant there.

Grant whined, clinging to Shawn’s leg. He knew Shawn would likely go off on his own. It was dangerous for Shawn to be alone. He could get attacked when he was alone. Grant needed to be with him to protect him. 

“I’ll only be a bit,” Shawn tried to reassure him. 

“Not..sa..fe...” Grant said. 

“I know. But I’ll be quick.” Shawn crouched down so he was eye level with Grant, patting his head with a gloved hand. He always wore gloves when touching Grant.

Grant whimpered again but still allowed Shawn to move away. He watched as Shawn climbed the stairs and disappeared into the Heavenly Toys area. Grant began to pace the little area next to the elevator, or do the closest thing he could to pacing without legs. He could feel other Searchers nearby. If they got close, he’d be overwhelmed by their influence. Then he’d probably end up hurting Shawn. He didn’t want that to happen. Shawn was his best friend. 

He kept pacing and worrying until Shawn returned, bag full of soup and a few unfinished plush projects.

“See? I told you it would be fine,” Shawn said. Just as the door to the stairs burst open. 

Shawn froze, his breath catching in his throat. There stood Sammy Lawrence, stumbling forward on legs almost completely consumed by the ink, flanked by several other Searchers in various stages of losing themselves to the ink. The Searchers stopped as they caught sight of him. Shawn’s eyes flicked from the Searchers to the elevator. Searchers moved slowly, so he could probably get to the elevator in time. Sammy was a bit of a wild-card, though.

“Ru...n...” Grant rasped, beginning to shake. “Wa...nna...hur...t...” He could feel the urge to attack Shawn rising up again. This always happened when other Searchers appeared. 

Sammy opened his mouth, a low growl coming out as he took a step toward Shawn. The Searchers stayed behind him, seemingly waiting for the signal to attack. Shawn’s heart pounded in his ears. He’d had close calls before, it was part of surviving in the studio, but he hadn’t come face to face with Sammy since the day of the outbreak. It was horrifying to see how Sammy had degraded. Sammy still looked mostly human. The ink had consumed parts of his body, yes, but his body wasn’t amorphous like the other Searchers. Shawn could still see his face, his limbs. It was a sickening sight to see one of his former coworkers reduced to little more than a slavering beast. 

Shawn bolted for the elevator, jabbing the button for level S. 

“Come on come on come on.” He muttered as the doors slid closed and the elevator began to lurch downward.

Most of the Searchers were too slow to catch the elevator, but Sammy moved quickly. He slammed against the door, reaching through the slats and yelling. Ink dripped from his mouth, spraying toward Shawn as Sammy yelled.  

“Hey! Get back!” Shawn swung at Sammy’s arms with his pipe. Thankfully, Sammy recoiled from the blows, groaning in pain. 

“I’ll catch up with you, Grant!” Shawn called out as the elevator descended out of sight. He just hoped Grant would be able to shake off the hivemind. He didn’t like leaving Grant on his own like that, but he didn’t have a choice. He didn’t want to get infected. Grant could take care of himself, right?

....Right?

[elejah-wonderland]

Love is A Heartbreak Away/1

Fanfiction

Part 1

Elijah Mikaelson x Elena Gilbert

Kol Mikaelson

AU TVD/TO story

Summary: Elena returns from London, England, to New Orleans after seven years.

As a teenager she had a huge crush on Kol Mikaelson, and dreams of seeing him again. But there is this older, stern, always busy, older brother, she didn’t care about at all. 

a/n: this was inspired by the movie ‘Sabrina’ with Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, cuz I love vintage stuff. I also loved the newer 80s remake with Harrison Ford and Ms Ormond.

Game of Love is nearing its end, and I thought I will give a glimpse into the new story. I hope you like it. xoxo

tags

@rissyrapp20 @dendrite-lover @cassienoble2000 @captainshurley @captainshurley @goddessofthunder112 @elejahforever @hides2000

_____

Esther Mikaelson waited for the family driver to open the door of the Bentley for her as she finished talking on the phone. As the man obliged and gave him instructions as to where to take her, she said-

"Is Elena arriving today?"

"Yes, Ma'm"- John Gilbert answered.

"Ah, wonderful"- Esther said-"how long has it been now?"

"Six years"- John answered.

"You must be so very proud of her,"- Esther continued-"what is it that she majored in."

"Industrial design"- John answered-"but she has been already working as a free lance photographer for a year now."

"It will be so nice to see her."- Esther said and as her phone rang she answered it.

"Yes, Elijah. I will be meeting the Claires for lunch today. Fine. I will not be coming to the office today. I will return as someone has to be on top of things here for tomorrow's party."- she said to her son.

Esther, a widow. had two sons, Elijah, 34, and Kol, 25. Of, which one, namely Elijah, was running the vast Mikaelson company, taking over after his late father Mikael, who together with their other brother Klaus got killed in a boating accident. His brother Kol spent most of his his time boat racing and acting more like a spoiled playboy, spending his time partying and avoiding the office as much as he could, even though he had a college degree in business. His mother had hopelessly tried to get him to take some of the load off of Elijah, and get him away from the races. But it was mission impossible.

As John brought her to the restaurant, she told him that he was free for the afternoon and go get Elena from the airport.

"Are you sure?"- John said-"Elena is not due to till four o'clock this afternoon."

"Yes. I will take the taxi back to the Plantation. Thank you, John"- Esther said and walked into the restaurant.

💖

In New York, Elena, who was waiting for her connecting flight to New Orleans, now rang her uncle.

"Hi uncle John- Yeah, the flight from London was great. Oh, can't wait to get back- You will meet me? Ah, thanks. I will see you soon. Bye"

The 22 year- old was excited to finally go back to the place, she had called home since the death of her parents when she was 13 years old. After the funeral, she was sent from Mystic Falls down to New Orleans, to her uncle as he was the only living relative she had left.

The three years that she had spent in New Orleans were happy ones.

Esther's sister Dahlia, who lived in London came to visit her sister after Mikael's tragic accident. The woman, seeing a tremendous talent in Elena, who showed her drawings, suggested she get further schooling in England, that she was willing to finance.

It being a tremendous stepping stone for the girl, her uncle agreed to send her there. And when Elena finished the Grammar school, she stayed on for college, as well.

Although she had made friends, and had her share of boyfriends, she had always dreamt of New Orleans, and the Mikaelson Plantation house. When she talked about it, she had always painted it as this charming place, like something out of a fairy-tale book.

And then, one day, like out of the blue, she just decided, it was time to go and pay the place a visit. Two weeks holidays. Go down the memory lane, see her uncle and soak in the magic of New Orleans.

Now, she smiled excited that she would see her childhood place again. Finishing the conversation, she put her phone down, and went to departure gate.

💖

At the same time, Kol, who returned from practice, received a message from his girlfriend Davina that she will be late returning from her trip in Florida. And so, he went up to his room for a shower. The family's butler catching up with him on the stairs, relayed to the young Mikaelson a message from his mother to stay home till she got back as she wanted to speak to him.

Kol acknowledged it and went unto his room.

In the bathroom, stepping into the shower, he huffed a bit as he knew he would get a lecture about his playboyish life style. Nothing knew, though. He would listen for maybe two minutes, and get into a project, which he would abandon, saying that someone else needed a job more than him.

And so it was with the Mikaelson family.

Two sisters, Esther and Dahlia, who inherited from their father the vast business and fortune. Dahlia, who has always been the rogue one, left to travel when she was young, staying in Europe, married and divorced several times. As she never had children, when she had met Elena and heard of her story, she enclosed her in her heart, treating her always like an adoptive daughter.

Elena found the woman and her artwork fascinating. She was different from all the women she had known before. Elena's world changed immensely when she arrived in London. From a shy girl, she turned into a wordly young woman, sophisticated, but still very compassionate and dear.

Landing a few hours later at Louis Armstrong Airport,  Elena greeted her uncle warmly.

"Look at you"- John said-"all grown up and-"- he didn't have words to express the change in his niece.

"And so very tired, and so hungry"- Elena said joking a bit.

"I see there is not much changed there after all"- John took her cases and put them in the car.

"I know it's been only six years, but it feels like an eternity"- Elena said as they got into the car-"and I've been really bad with keeping in touch."

"It is fine. The extensive letters at Christmas were enough. I am so very glad you did great kid, and that Dahlia - Ms Peterson took good care of you."

"Yeah, she was good. Really good."- Elena said.

"Good. I was worried a bit. I mean, she is - different."- he didn't know what to call the excentric artist-" Not like Mrs Mikaelson."

"I can't believe they are actually sisters"- Elena said.

"Same goes for Elijah and Kol. It's like Kol is Dahlia's son"- John said.

"How is Kol?"- Elena now asked.

John now told her about the younger Mikaelson, whom Elena would timidly greet  when they used to meet in the kitchen back when she lived there, watch him from the distance get in and out with his friends. He was then a High School senior, and, same as now, had a very busy social life.

John had also told her a bit about Elijah. She had never met him, as he went to Mexico taking over the management of their Plantation there, after his father's death.

"So, he returned?"- Elena said.

"Yes. A month after you left."- John said-"I very rarely see him. He is constantly in the office or lives in the town house. He still travels down to Mexico. But, he is a very responsible and kind person"

"You mean - boring"- Elena said.

"I don't know. As I said, I rarely see him. Anyway, tomorrow is a big party. It's Mrs Mikaelson's 60th birthday celebration. I forgot to tell you. And you are invited."

"Oh, thanks."

"She wants to see you later"- John informed Elena.

As they arrived to the Plantation outside New Orleans, Elena stood a moment in front of the beautiful house feeling like she slipped back into the moment she had first arrived. This house was like a palace and she was a girl, very sad and lost, and she wondered about how her life would be living in it.

Another car pulled in and a man got out of it.

Elena turned around to see who it was.

The man greeted John, who got Elena's suitcases out.

"Good evening Mr Mikaelson"- John said.

Elena looked at Elijah, who was looking back at her. 

"This is my niece, Elena."- John introduced the woman.

Elijah, same as Elena now snapped out of the momentary enchantment - she putting her hand out as he did - shaking their hands, the man said-

"Elijah- nice to meet you."

"Elena"- she said just nodding.

Elijah nodded a little, too, and excusing himself went to the house.

Elena stood a second longer looking at him enter the house, before her uncle told her to follow him.

Elena went in as well.

________

[sofreakinmanyfandoms]

The Nice Guy - Clint Barton X Reader college!AU - 1/6

I don’t remember if it was @rogue-barnes-16 or @cryforfandoms who inspired this, but it was one of them. Plus, I’m having so much fun writing Clint in NCNR, and also I’m sick of the trope of unrequited love actually being requited. (You’ll find out as you read it.) So, here you go. My first Clint Barton fic.

EDIT: I apparently accidentally removed the “keep reading” before posting. Sorry to everyone who found that before I fixed it.

Word count: 1453

Warnings: Mild angst. A tiny bit of commentary on my opinion of the traditional idea of masculinity. 

The small party was in full swing when you arrived at Clint and Natasha’s new place. They had used Christmas break to move into their off-campus apartment and had invited your core friend group over for a New Year’s Eve bash.

The three of you had grown up together, and although your friend group had expanded once you were in college, you were still each other’s best friends. They had invited you to join them when the apartment hunt had started, but you’d just been upgraded to a solo apartment at your residence hall and were looking forward to not having roommates for once in your life.

“Hey, there she is!” Sam called out as you entered. “Riley! Your girl’s here!”

Your boyfriend, Sam’s roommate Riley, emerged from around the corner.

“Hey baby,” he greeted you, leaning in to give you a kiss and taking the grocery bags from your hand. “What did you bring?”

“Three bags each of nacho cheese and cool ranch Doritos for us normal people,” you grinned, pulling out a yellow bag. “And, of course, one bag of plain Doritos for the weirdo.”

“I heard that,” Clint said, swooping in from somewhere to grab them from you. “I’d be mad, but I’ve been seriously craving nachos all day. Thanks, Y/N.” He shoved a few dollar bills in your hand and bolted for the kitchen.

“Y/N, can you make sure he doesn’t light our new microwave on fire?” Nat called to you from living room. “He forgot to take the plastic off one of them last time.”

You winced and called back your agreement, giving Riley a peck on the cheek before following Clint.

“I can’t believe you can actually crave nachos with a recipe like that,” you teased Clint as you entered the kitchen.

He looked up at you from where he was peeling the plastic off squares of American cheese. “Says the lactose intolerant chic who wouldn’t know good nachos if they did the salsa in front of her. I don’t know how you stand that vegan cheese stuff.”

“At least I’m not dropping sandwich squares of cheap cheese on a plate of boring chips,” you shot back. “Have you ever considered, I don’t know, adding something with flavor? Taco meat, or salsa, or something? Heck, even flavored Doritos would make that stuff better.”

Clint dropped his plate in the microwave and shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong with simple. Besides, I’m in college; I’m taking advantage of the expectation I won’t know how to cook. I have to learn enough stuff in class already, so no way am I trying to cram more kitchen info into my brain when I can survive just fine on this stuff.”

You sighed and shook your head. “You’re hopeless, Barton, you know that?”

“And you love me anyway,” he grinned, dropping an arm around your shoulders.

“Whatever lets you sleep at night,” you laughed, shrugging off his shoulder and wandering back out to the party.

Clint watched you leave and sighed. Having you and your boyfriend hanging off each other in his apartment was going to test his self-control all night. This was going to be a long party.

---------- 

You settled in next to Nat, who was curled up in her boyfriend Bucky’s lap. He was talking to Sam and Riley, leaving her free to converse with you.

“How are you two enjoying the new apartment so far?”

“It’s so nice being off-campus,” she admitted. “Clint’s a great roommate, too, when he’s not melting plastic in the microwave. Are you enjoying living alone?”

“Gosh, yes,” you sighed, “it’s perfect. No one leaves dishes in the sink overnight or their coat on the couch.”

She laughed and shook her head. “You always were a bit of a neat freak.”

“Hey, Nat?” Bucky shot you a look of apology as he cut into your conversation. “Can I get up, doll? I’d like to go with the guys who are picking up some pizza.”

Nat pouted at him, but you could see the smile she was trying to hide. “But I’m comfy,” she whined.

“If all the guys all go, we’ll get a few minutes of girl time,” you offered.

Bucky gave you a grateful smile when Natasha sighed and stood up. He, Sam, and Riley gathered their coats as Steve came up with his car keys.

“Hey, Barton, wanna join us?” Sam called. “We’re gonna go get pizzas and drinks. The girls are staying here to do who knows what girly stuff. We’ve got one more seat in the car.”

“Nah,” Clint said as he came around the corner, nachos in hand. “I’m gonna stay and finish these.”

“He’s practically one of the girls anyway,” Nat teased. “It can still be a girl’s night.”

Riley leaned over and kissed you on the cheek. “We’ll be back in an hour, baby.”

“All right,” you smiled up at him, “see you then.”

----------- 

“What the hell?”

At Sam’s exclamation, the three of you looked up at the guys who had just tromped in with the pizzas and a few cases of soda.

“What?” Clint asked innocently.

You and Natasha were seated on the floor facing each other, painting each other’s toenails. Clint’s were already finished; he was leaning his back against the couch and reading an article from the latest issue of Us Weekly aloud as they dried.

Sam gave his feet a pointed look. “Your toenails are hot pink.”

“The color,” Clint informed him, “is called Bachelorette Bash. Nat’s are Russian Roulette and Y/N’s are Loot the Booty.”

Riley made a choking sound. You shot him a glare.

“Pirate booty, Babe. Treasure. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“Man,” Sam shook his head, “you’re crazy.”

“Told you he was practically one of us,” Nat laughed.

You grinned up at your boyfriend. “I’d be happy to do yours next.”

“I think I’ll pass,” he said with a smile, bending over to kiss you on the top of your head. “Maybe Sam’ll take you up on the offer.”

“Like hell I will,” Sam muttered, drawing a laugh from his roommate.

“I’ll take mine in mint green,” Bucky announced, flopping down on the couch.

Nat blew on your toes as she finished the last one and reached for a bottle of base coat. “Do you mean Chillato, Mint Candy Apple, or Bon Boy-age?”

“The first one.”

“Dibs on…” Steve scooped up a bottle and read the color title, “Leggy Legend.”

“Shoes and socks off,” you laughed as you took the bottle from him. “Do you want base and top coat too, or just the polish?”

He looked at you like you were crazy. “Duh, base and top coat too! Gotta help that color last as long as possible.”

Sam shot a look at Riley. “We’re surrounded by crazies.”

“It’s just polish,” Bucky scoffed. “It’s not like having colorful toenails puts your manhood in jeopardy.”

“You could learn a thing or two from us,” Clint said with a nod. “We have attractive women fussing over our feet.”

“If you’re concerned about people seeing the color, I have some nearly invisible sheer polish you’re welcome to use,” Nat informed them, finishing the basecoat on Bucky’s second foot. “It doesn’t even have a girly name.”

“Shine makes your nails look healthier,” Steve teased.

“I’m good, really,” Sam insisted with a shake of his head.

“Same,” Riley agreed.

The two of them passed around sodas and slices of pizza to those who were stuck in place while their toenails dried. By the time the ball dropped on TV, everyone’s polish was dry and people had resituated themselves around the room.

“You know, we’re in New York,” Steve remarked dryly. “We could’ve gone to see the ball drop in person.”

“Yes, but the apartment is warmer,” Clint pointed out.

“Touché.”

The singles in the room cheered as the ball dropped, while the two couples kissed.

“Happy New Year, Baby,” Riley whispered.

You smiled back. “Happy New Year.”

---------- 

Well, that could have gone worse, Clint told himself as he lay in bed, the party long over. He’d gotten an hour with you and Natasha without Riley around kissing you every few minutes. He’d had to glue his eyes to the TV for your New Year’s kiss, but as hard as it had been to see you happy with someone else, he did like to see you happy. Maybe if he hadn’t been a coward through high school, you’d be happy with him instead.

He rolled over and curled himself around his extra pillow. As he slept, thoughts of you kept drifting through his head. Your smile, your laugh, the way you lit up at his stupid jokes….

Yeah, he definitely had it bad.

[optimisticcritique]

Gotham 4x22 - Review

Better late than never? I had a fever when watching this so...we’ll see how this goes. 

Intense scene. “Promise?” I doubt she will die but this breaks my heart. Poor Selina :(

I have a hunch Bruce won’t be able to keep that promise.

All the cops giving Jeremiah the death stare.

“We couldn’t talk with his girlfriend bleeding all over him” Hmm...well, maybe you shouldn’t have shot her then?

“I am a very good engineer” So modest. I’m curious how well he would get along with Ed :P

Jeremiah’s obsession with Bruce never seizes to amaze me. Such a contrast to Jerome. Jerome wanted Bruce to suffer and die, Jeremiah wants Bruce to suffer and then become dark as he joins him.

Hugo Strange! They skipped finding him and threatening him and went straight to this!

I’m surprised Hugo automatically knows how to cure him. Has this happened before? Is there another Grundy running around?

This is not going to work out well for them. No couple gets a happy ending in Gotham. 

“What? No, she’s in surgery. I’m going to go kill Jeremiah!” Haha well, that figures. You go, Tabby! I do love how much she cares for Selina. She has such a heart for her.  

I am suspicious of what Oswald will do when Tabitha leaves. He’s being too nice. I sense betrayal.

Well, hello Ra’s. That’s not creepy at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is how he meets his best friends. 

And another mayor bites the dust. At what point will people refuse to become mayor and they’ll have to draw names out of a hat to make someone take the role?

The way violence seems to un-faze Jeremiah. It’s like a punch to the face or a push to the wall means nothing.

Arrest Jim? Well, that’s a little extreme for disagreeing. 

“It’s polite to let people finish” Yeah Jim, he has barely gotten to give riddles this season. Don’t ruin it!

“RISE AND SHINE! Good morning sweetheart” First off, the sweetheart ;) Second, I will not be surprised if people start setting this as their ringtones. 

“Remember when you punched me in the face?” *slaps him dramatically* Wow, even his slaps are extra. 

“We are a little pressed for time” *laughs at his own joke* ...wow, this is probably the most relatable Ed has ever been.  

Ed with his long and extreme ways of killing someone. 

I hate the motive but I do love seeing Ed go full on like this :)

So...does Ra’s really turn out the lights for dramatic effect? Is there someone working for him that turns it off? Ra’s: ready? go! Man: *turns off light* Ra’s: *fights people* Man: *turns it back on* Me: Bet he’s fun at parties.

Some of his power is off? Hmm...I still don’t understand the whole point of this Babs and the painting of the look alike. 

This all just points to Ra’s totally trying to use her for the power. 

What? This guy doesn’t even care anything about Jim at all? I mean, I know he isn’t exactly priority but still...

“Closer Please. Closer” I just expect him to keep saying this until they are face to face. 

Destined as best friends? Well, you’re destined as something alright...

The wink XD With his bad eye, no less

I sincerely doubt that was the only bomb that was planted.

The way Jeremiah talks about Selina. Savage! 

Wow, Lee is acting so calm about this. 

“I am going to decide who I am going to be. Not you, not Jim Gordon.” Yes! Love it.

Lee is totally manipulating Ed by pretending not to care if Ed kills him so that she saves Jim’s life. It’s too obvious.

“She chose me” Umm not exactly Ed. 

“One question: who do I get to kill?” Oh, Oswald, strutting in and ready to fight. He just couldn’t stay away. 

Alfred, Babs, Tabby, and Oswald all working together? I love it!

Better hope Ed isn’t secretly listening to all this. 

Honestly, at this point, I want Lee to be done with these romances. I just want her to be happy and independent for awhile.

Basically, Ra’s and his plan is “meh” to Jeremiah. He’s just all in it for Bruce. 

“The brother I never had” “...together” aww how twistedly sweet of you. 

Oh, so now he cares what happened when Jim was taken? 

Just listen to Jim! 

I love seeing the GCPD being so loyal. They have come a long way. 

The demon’s head not working I guess is the convenient way to explain how they all get the drop on him.

Ha! I love how Oswald is the only one screaming as he shoots the gun, while everyone else just runs in. Honestly, it wouldn’t be an episode of Gotham if he didn’t. 

Wait, Oswald shot Jeremiah and saved Tabby? I’m just...that seems so weirdly nice. This is the same person that murdered his mother and yet he’s doing this. Not like they would let Tabby die though. Is that the surprising thing for RLT? Him saving her? My memory of the interview is so vague all of sudden. No...it has to be a bad thing. This can’t be it. 

Are you kidding me? They stab and kill him again? I mean, I never LOVED Ra’s but he was barely even alive! 

That grin on Jeremiah. I oddly love how devilish it looks. 

*Lee stabs Ed* What?! Oh, I did not see this coming. *Ed stabs Lee* Double stabbing! That one I was expecting. 

Seriously? A kiss now? 

So, in 4x14, Ed almost killed himself so that he wouldn’t try to kill Lee...now here we have Lee and Ed trying to kill each other. How poetic.

Whoa! Butch is back! ...Is he about to die? 

I’m kind of sad by how kind of shallow it is that Tabby doesn’t say “I love you” until he is back to being Butch. Also a bit sad by how confusing the relationship status is with Babs/Tabby too.  

*Oswald shoots him* Wow, he actually did it!

“Did you think I forgot that you murdered my mother?” Oh my god... YES. I mean, it’s sad that Butch is dead and I love Drew but like...I was just thinking about how Tabby killed Gertrude ...And I love callbacks way too much. 

Wow. So, he waited and planned to get her back for two seasons. This is some crazy stuff. Impressively ingenious. 

Hey, when did Oswald get the new henchmen?

*pans on Butch’s dead body* :( So sad...is that a tear rolling down his cheek? Was Butch crying? (UPDATE: It is very possible that was Drew crying from it being his last scene and now if that is a tear, this scene is even sadder.)

So, Selina won’t be able to walk? Surely this won’t last...at least I wouldn’t think. Unless they are going for something different.

Yes! You go, Bruce! It’s sad that you are leaving Selina but I love this. Be the dark knight! I hope this means Bruce will be the one to fight Penguin, Riddler, Jeremiah, Mr. Freeze, Scarecrow, and other new rogues next season. 

Oh yes!!! Love the new digs for Penguin. 

All these rogues carving up their territory. The montage, the costumes, the music. I love this so much. Why must season 5 be so short and be in 2019? 

Savage Jon! Scarecrow got a new hat! I like :)

“Penguin says fix ‘em” Wait...Ed and Lee? Did they die? First, the thought of Penguin going straight to Ed after all this mess and refusing to accept Ed’s death makes me very happy. Second, oh my god! What is that smirk, Strange? What are you going to do? 

Is she about to blame Penguin for everything? Ah, men...I mean, she has had a rough go with men so I guess I can see where her understanding goes.

Yay! Harvey and Foxy are staying :) 

I didn’t even realize Jeremiah got away. Sneaky!

The future bat signal! I love it. 

“I stayed to fight for the city” ...Wow. I was half expecting Jim to disapprove. Guess he knows it’ll be pointless and Bruce would just do whatever he wants anyway. 

Manbat! Sweet. Hello mother, how are you? Wow, brutal.

Part of me is excited, the other part is hoping all of this won’t be too much in the final season. 

Season 1 callback to their first meeting. “There is light” Love it :’)

Overall: Wow! What an episode! I loved it. Crazy to think that this is the last one for about a year but it definitely left an exciting impression.

Jeremiah was fun and had some great interactions with Bruce. Really building up that relationship in the past few episodes, which was nice. Overall, he’s great. However, I do still wish they could have introduced him sooner. We didn’t get to see enough. My hope is that we see plenty more of him next season.

Not a lot of Selina in this episode. Nice homage though. I’m curious where this story will take her, now that she is currently paralyzed.  

The Oswald/Butch thing was sad. I mean, I’m sad for Butch and I love Drew so it sucks. Drew is an amazing actor and I will miss his presence very much. Also, no Grundy :/ That being said, it was a surprise reveal and callback that I did not see coming. I’m so used to so many shows always forgetting plot points or being so serial. So, any time that a show does a callback, I love it. It reminds me that the writer's actually remembered their work and that the characters think about their past. And, for someone that murdered a man for insulting Gertrude’s singing in S1, it would be odd for Oswald to just forget about Tabby murdering Gertrude. The writers found a way to keep Oswald in character while also keeping Tabitha alive, only they had to sacrifice Butch and push the Butch/Tabby relationship a bit in order to do it. That kind of leaves me conflicted :/

The whole Lee/Ed thing is...well, I think it is over and they will now focus on their own separate stories, which I prefer at this point. I’m curious what Strange will do to them next season. Doubt it will be anything major physically though. 

Looks like rogues are taking territory, which is awesome! I expect every rogue to go embrace their personas like never before and now fully go up against Bruce. There’s also a few other rogues they are going to slip in, which will be fun. 

All around, there is a lot to look forward to. Wanted to make this review a bit extra long, since it was the final one of the season. I wanted to cover some of the main things that I enjoyed. There were a few things that left me conflicted, like Ed/Lee stuff, Butch dying, and Ra’s dying AGAIN, but I still really loved the episode. Can’t wait to see what is next!     

Previous Review: 4x21

[afkmercymain-blog]

Distractions

Symbra Week fic for Day 2:  Fantasy AU (Skyrim AU to be exact)  | ao3

Sombra, the one and only Dragonborn, is terrible at completing quests for the wonderful people of Skyrim.  Can her new traveling companion, Satya Vaswani, get her back on track towards saving the land from dragons and stuff?  Probably not...

Satya Vaswani was pleased with her former life; a rising star among the Scholars at the College of Winterhold and a master Conjurer without peer.  Why did she give up that life to spend most of her days following the Dragonborn into damp, dark caves all throughout Skyrim?  She wasn't entirely sure of that herself.

A few months ago, Satya found herself in dire need of assistance.  She misplaced some of her summoning scrolls in an old Dwemer structure located south of the College. Satya always loved studying these ruins—their technology and architecture absolutely fascinated her with its intricacies.  Of course, she didn't have time to trek all the way down to the ruins herself.  As a former mentor once advised her, these are the times you wait for some plucky adventurer to arrive at your door one day, looking for a grand quest.  Luckily for Satya, this adventurer showed herself sooner rather than later.  

This woman, who appeared at her door one fateful evening, wasn't just your typical adventurer but The Dragonborn; the alleged chosen one who would save Skyrim from the dragon menace, unite the warring political factions, etc. This woman referred to herself as “Sombra”; not her birth name, Satya assumed, but likely one she chose for herself.

Satya normally turned away random strangers knocking on her door but she heard rumors how this particular stranger gained admittance to the College without even knowing how to cast the most simple of spells.  It was most curious.

She had to be the one.

The one who would risk life and limb to finally retrieve her stack of summoning scrolls from the Alftand ruins.  Granted, Satya could have easily created a replacement for all these scrolls but remember, she was <i>very busy</i>. Additionally, the adventurer was without a doubt the most beautiful woman she had ever gazed upon in all of Skyrim, in spite of her picking out the worst hair style imaginable.  Satya hated to admit it, but that only added to her charm in an odd way.  One could say, she had extra motivation for wanting to keep the rogue around as long as possible.

It was no surprise Sombra returned with the scrolls in relatively short time.  It was surprising that Satya agreed to join The Dragonborn as a traveling companion when offered the role.  She was happy at the College and yet, she accepted. Sombra somehow managed to infiltrate Satya's heart in just a short time.    

Now here they were, in a damp, dark cave somewhere south Dawnstar.  Why did they decide to enter this cave again?  That's right, Sombra wished to explore it because, her exact words were, “It's a cave.  It probably has stuff in it.”

Satya sighed, remembering how they entered this cave for literally no justifiable reason at all; placing themselves in unnecessary danger.  She watched as Sombra crouched low to the ground near a giant spider.  The woman would slowly approach the monstrous creature in a hunched down position and then retreat again, repeating the motion over and over...  

“Might I ask what you're hoping to accomplish by repeating this activity?”  Satya finally had enough.

“Shhhh...I'm training my stealth skills,” Sombra replied in a whisper.

Satya chuckled, “Yet, you've dyed the leather on your armor bright purple.”

“That...that doesn't make you easier to detect, okay.  Trust me, I'm the high-ranking stealth expert, here.”

Satya rolled her eyes.  “Perhaps I'll practice some of my own skills.  Considering how much of my day is spent standing around in caves...”  She waved her magical staff in the air until it glowed a bright white at the tip, “...I  need it.”

The spell created a large portal to Oblivion.  Shortly before it closed, a Storm Atronach appeared and exited out into the cave.  “Or, perhaps not,” Satya added smugly. She was quite proud to have summoned such a powerful Daedra.  

Lightning swirled around the creature and the crackling noise caught the attention of the giant spider.  Of course, the spider attacked and the Storm Atronach killed it swiftly.

“Damn!  Now how am I going to practice sneaking?” Sombra cried out in frustration.

“I'm sure you have more important things in need of your attention,” Satya replied, holding up the Sombra's battered journal inches from the woman's annoyed face.

Satya's first task as companion to the Dragonborn involved organizing her journal.  It was an utter mess and it grated on her nerves trying to make any sense of it.  Eventually, she organized each of the quests by region, city, person, and then by completion status.  By her estimate, eighty-seven percent of the quests in the journal remained unfinished.  She tried to get Sombra to set a schedule or even create a rough plan in an attempt to complete most of these quests.  But here they were, in a cave with a dead spider, not progressing a single quest in the journal.  Sombra even wrote the word “Importante” next to one of the quests and included a large number of exclamation points all over the page.  Satya tried (and failed) numerous times to convince the Dragonborn to finish at least this quest, considering it seemed so vital at one point.

“Not this again,” Sombra groaned. “Oh, and could you get rid of this guy.  He's staring at us and starting to creep me out,” she pointed her thumb towards the summoned Storm Atronach. 

Satya snapped her fingers and the creature returned to Oblivion.

“Thanks,” Sombra replied.

“My reward?” Satya asked and crossed her arms.

“Oh, what would you like me to do for you, dear Satya?” Sombra smirked, drawing closer and flirting with her eyes.

Satya opened the journal to the page she had bookmarked weeks ago, “You could finish this quest for me.”  It was the quest on the page with all the exclamation marks.

Sombra made a disgusted face, “Ugh, no.  I hate meeting with those Greybearded guys on that damn mountain.  It's cold and it takes forever to get up there.  And...I lost that horse I stole in Riften.”

“I can easily create a teleport from here to High Hrothgar.  However, I may need a stronger magic staff to channel a spell of that power,” Satya suggested.

“Hmmm...hold on, I might have a stronger one in my bag.”  Sombra removed a magical leather pack from her back and placed it on the ground before both of them.  It could hold a surprisingly large amount of equipment.  Satya suspected the Dragonborn had already looted a better magical staff earlier in their travels but forgot to hand the upgrade to her.  She couldn't even manage her journal let alone her inventory.

Sombra reached in and pulled out a loaf of bread.  She sniffed it before tossing it to the side, then dug her hand into the bag again.

“Hey, I found some nice armor in here!  Where did I even get this from?  No, wait, you don't wear heavy armor.”  Sombra continued digging until she finally found something.  “Ah!  This one looks good, right?” she pulled out a wooden magical staff that looked similar to the one Satya already carried and held it up for the mage to inspect.

“It's definitely more powerful.  I can sense it.”  Satya discarded her old staff onto the cave floor and grabbed the one in Sombra's hand.  She could feel the magic coursing through her body when she focused her magicka through the staff.  The sensation quickly became overwhelming so she cut off her focus.

“Hey, look what I found in here!” Sombra held up a large, ugly looking amulet in front of Satya.

“What is that?”

“It's an Amulet of Mara!  I guess that means we have to get married now,” Sombra beamed.

“I don't think so,” Satya replied dryly.

“Aw, why not?  You said I was cute and charming and ... a disorganized mess but you could still love me in spite of that,” Sombra flashed her a big toothy grin.  “On top of that, I completed your quest, at least.  If that doesn't show how much I care, I don't know what else I can do, Satya.  You know how much I suck at finishing them.”

“True.  However, the scroll retrieval quest only met the minimum requirement for joining you as a traveling companion but not for marriage.”

“Aw, don't say it Satya...” Sombra closed her eyes and placed her right palm over her forehead.

“If you want marriage, you'll need to complete another quest for me.”

“Ugh, okay fine.  What is it?  And can you jot it down in the journal for me, please?”

“No.  I'm not adding it to the journal, Sombra.  We're finishing it now.”

“You haven't even told me what it is yet.”

It occurred to Satya that she didn't actually have a quest to give Sombra.  Since leaving the College, her life became much simpler in a sense.  She no longer required items such as rare ingredients for magical experiments or ancient spell scrolls.  Still, she needed to come up with some task for Sombra as a prerequisite for accepting the marriage proposal.  This is just how romance worked in Skyrim.  To do otherwise would be unheard of. Satya tapped her index finger against her chin, thinking...

She could give Sombra a ridiculously impossible task.  While humorous, it would also mean delaying both their wedding and completing the “important” quest in High Hrothgar.  Unacceptable, I'll give her something menial, Satya reasoned.

“For your quest, I require one giant spider leg.”  It couldn't get easier than this.  There was dead, giant spider meters away from them.

“A giant spider leg?  Hmmm...” Sombra concentrated, rubbing her chin.  Satya tilted her head towards the dead spider on the cave floor.

“Right,” Sombra rushed over to the spider and cut off one of its legs.  She handed the grotesque thing to Satya, who grabbed the leg but immediately dropped it onto the ground.

“You've done as I asked,” Satya replied with a hint of disgust in her voice.  This is the last time she'll be asking anyone to retrieve her spider legs.  “I accept your marriage proposal.  Where's the nearest Temple of Mara?”

Sombra smiled, “That's great!” she leaned in and kissed Satya on the lips.  “Um, the nearest Temple of Mara is in Riften—which is the only Temple of Mara in all of Skyrim.  Don't ask me why they make everyone go to one town to get married...”

“Portal?” Satya suggested.

“Yeah, let's do it!”

They arrived in Riften shortly after Satya created the portal leading to the middle of town.  Thankfully, her calculations were correct and they didn't end up in the middle of a dragon lair or in Morrowind.  Sombra mentioned she needed to find a 'fence' after their wedding so she could finally sell some items in her bag.  Satya wasn't sure what she meant by that but they could fit this in, surely.    

The pair found the Temple of Mara and presented themselves to a Priest of Mara named Hanzo.  The man was rather taciturn and kept the ceremony short.  Satya thought his demeanor odd for a servant of the Goddess of Love, but then again, having to preform weddings for every idiotic, love-struck adventurer that finds an amulet would take its toll.  After the ceremony, Hanzo quickly shooed them out the temple door.  Outside, they smiled lovingly at each other and Sombra warmly embraced Satya.  They kissed for the first time as Mrs. and Mrs. Dragonborn.  They finally pulled apart shortly after Priest Hanzo yelled for them to get of the temple lawn.

“By the way, do you have a home?” Satya asked her new wife.  

“Well...no,” Sombra laughed nervously.  “Didn't get around to it yet.”

“I'm not surprised,” Satya sighed.

“Hold on a sec,” Sombra swiped her hand at the air in front of her.  Satya initially thought the woman swatted at an insect but a transparent purple square-shaped object appeared out of thin air.  Sombra rapidly poked her fingers at it for a short moment before swiping it out of the air.

“I've never seen a Conjuration spell quite like that one.  What was it?” Satya asked her after the object disappeared.

“Conjuration spell?  Oh yeah, that’s a...  It's a secret one I learned myself.  I can't teach it to you because—well, I forgot to write down the steps.  Anyway...” she wrapped her left arm around Satya's waist, “...the good news is, we now have a house in Riften!  And, one in Whiterun and Solitude and Windhelm, but who's counting?  Let's check out our new home, mi amor.”  Satya laughed and placed her right arm over Sombra's shoulder and the two walked off into the sunset, towards their new home and a bright future together...

...and maybe finally completing a quest or two.

[rogue-durin-16]

THE HEIR'S CURSE (Part II/?)

Request: I have this idea of the reader being a princess and having to marry fili cuz hes the heir and she likes him but she ends up falling for his brother? Maybe with some angst? You can choose the end 😆

Pairing: Fíli x Reader, eventually Kíli x Reader

Genre: angst w/ fluffy moments

Tags:

Requested by: @crispykittywitch

The heir's curse: ———

Permanent taglist: @queenofmankind @randomparanoid @karlthecat15722 @thebutchersdaughtersblog

Warnings:

A/N: this is a mess at so many levels but hey I did proofreading this time, so enjoy a not-so-badly written part <3

Part I

Rogue-durin-16 masterlist

"Princess Y/n and prince Fíli!" A thunderous voice announced as Fíli and I stepped into the enormous halls with all eyes on us.

"Don't stop until we reach the dining table." The golden haired dwarf subtly muttered, strolling through the crowd with my hand holding onto his forearm.

"I wasn't planning on it." I replied, presenting a smile to the dwarven kin of Erebor and occasionally bowing. "Honestly," once in our destination, we spotted Kíli, who joyfully waved at us, and sat down by his side, "I don't see how we'll be able to leave."

"I'll think about something." Right after he assured me that, I felt a tap on my shoulder and, given that Fíli spun his head, I figured his attention was requested too. "Ma'am."

"Mother." We said these words simultaneously.

"My dears, you forgot about the opening dance." Fíli and I shared an equally horrified look. "Given that you are the center of the celebration, the tradition requires you to—"

"We did not forget, ma'am." He spared her a polite smile before continuing, "but I'm in fact a terrible dancer and–"

"A liar, that's what you are." Though the blond one had his back facing his brother, I was sure Kíli could feel the murderous energy he triggered in his brother. "He's a great dancer," his brown eyes traveled from me to my mother and viceversa, his grin growing wider at my horrified look. "he's just shy sometimes," to take the tease to a whole other level, he nudged his brother's back way stronger than necessary. "right Fí?"

Before the older prince attempted to murder his own brother in front of his future mother-in-law, I jolted up and pulled his hand, dragging him to the improvised dancehall.

I spun around to stand face-to-face with him, which made my dress's skirt fly, drawing a beautiful fan around my legs before abruptly coming to a stop. "Tell me you're actually a good dancer." I begged in low voice.

"Well–" Before he could let out another word, the music started playing.

Oh boy, was he a good dancer.

I barely had to move by myself, he did all the work; spinning me, sweeping me off my feet, guiding my feet and leading me by my hands, and I was sure he was making it look finesse and effortless.

At some point the melody changed to something more lighthearted and less regal, and we started to actually have fun while we danced. We laughed, exaggerated the moves, made faces; we even intentionally bumped each other attempting to make the other lose their balance.

The latter resulted on me tripping and Fíli's arms steadying me against his chest with a smug smile that turned into a chuckle when I smacked his chest.

The party began to be enjoyable, and since I didn't know how long would that last, I was resolved to make the best of it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

FÍLI'S P. O. V.

I finally managed to get rid of the nosy dwarves that had been interrogating me for the last ten minutes and made my way to my intended, who I found sat across the hall, by the table which was basically deserted aside from a couple of blackout drunk dwarves.

Seeing them made me realize how long the party had gone on already —probably around half a day, maybe more.

"I'm so sorry." I halfheartedly apologized to a very tired-looking Y/n, who vaguely dismissed me with a shake of her head. "I really hoped I would have you out of here by now."

"It's alright." She gave me a small smile whilst getting up and grasped both my hands, taking a look around us. "Plus, it was expected that your uncle and my mother would have us stay for as long as possible."

"At least they could let us be together." I grumbled, looking over my shoulders to make sure no one attempted to disturb our brief break. "Since the dance I barely spent three minutes with you."

"Royal duties suck." She whispered under her breath, only loud enough for my ears to caught on it. "Do you think it's their way to stop us from fleeing the celebration?"

"Could be." Both of our eyes were directed to our previously mentioned relatives and arrangers of the union, who were now chatting. "It's a good strategy."

"I hate that it's actually working." letting go of one of her hands to stroke my mustache whilst trying to find a way to escape the party. "Where did your mind go now?" Just when I was about to reply, her eyes fixed on something behind me, or rather someone. "Oh shit."

I peeked over my shoulder to see Balin approaching us side by side with one of Y/n's direct relatives. "C'mon now..."

"I think the break is over." Her eyes didn't leave the now expected intruders, nor did mine.

"Y/n!" She put up her best smile once more and let go of my hand to walk towards them. "let me introduce you to my cousin Balin."

"I didn't have the chance to congratulate you, lass." I heard the old dwarf's words getting lost in the loud noise of the crowded halls as I walked away in search of Kíli.

KÍLI'S P. O. V.

I made a beeline to Y/n practically jogging and, in the blink of an eye, I had her hand in mine and was pulling her away from the people and out of the halls. I heard her little squeal of surprise followed by Balin yelling my name, but I didn't stop until we were far enough from the entrance to avoid the guests' eyes.

"Did you just steal me away?" She rhetorically inquired, looking at me quite puzzled as I checked no one came after us. "Not that I'm complaining, but what was that?"

"Fíli begged me to drag you out of the party."

"You took it to the T." She teased with her arms folded over her chest.

"It worked, didn't it?" She silently agreed and I beamed proudly. "I'm your hero, huh?"

Y/n snorted. "Am I not the one supposed to say that?"

"I did it so you didn't have to." I extended my arm in a way that was prompting Y/n to walk into another corridor. "I'm going to escort you to your chambers, to make sure you don't fall asleep on your way there."

She gave me an eye roll followed by a breathy laugh, and we began our late night trip to her room. I hadn't told her we were taking the long way, but I figured she would catch on that by herself since Fíli had given her a tour a day before.

We were halfway through, walking in silence after some chitchat and bickering, when I detected a restrained yawn through my side view. "In a scale of one to ten, how tired are you?" I questioned.

"A ten and a half maybe?" She half smiled and I couldn't help but chuckle. "Dwarven celebrations exhaust me."

"They exhaust anyone who's not drinking." I pointed out, having my eyes wander around, stopping on anything and everything in our walk, but on her . "Fíli is not a fan either, but he knows this one was necessary."

"Is it, though?" She inquired with her brows raised and her face slightly turned to stare at me.

"Well, I suppose it is. it's your welcoming to Erebor," I obliged myself to look at her, just for an instant, and then averting my gaze once more as I said my next words. "And it's also meant to celebrate that my brother would soon join you in marriage."

"Ugh, please," she leaned her head back, spitting a mix of a groan and a whine up to the air "do not remind me of that."

"Why?" I stopped dead in my tracks, and caused her to do so, too. "Are you displeased with my brother?"

"No!" her eyes widened as she vehemently shook her head no. "Not at all, he's caring, good at heart and fun to be around," she walked to the outer side of the terrace we had been walking through and rested her elbows on the edge. "but things feel rushed and... Rather forced."

"If it's because of the party," I followed her steps and installed myself besides her, "It doesn't mean much, feel no pressure." Now the tables had turned; my eyes observed her form and hers were focused on what was before us. "If you ever wish to break the arrangement, it will be done, Fíli would say so too."

Her lips pursed into a thin line "I always thought that when I married, it would be for love and not for my Kingdom." I then looked down wondering what should I say to her. "I may sound selfish but... That should be my sister's duty. She's the heiress, for better or worse, and I'm just—"

My mouth moved before I could think my words. "A younger sister who wasn't supposed to carry the weight of a union?"

Silence.

"At least he's handsome." we both shared a look before snorting at the comment. "I think I like him, but I don't love him, and I can't tell if I ever will." She opened her mouth like a fish out of water "Mahal, can you imagine how that'd be?"

I heard the fear in her last sentences, even if she hadn't explicitly stated that she dreaded the mere idea of not being able to love her husband-to-be.

"You'll come to love him." I tried to reassure her.

"You think so?"

"I know so."

"I hope you're right." Another yawn escaped her lips, making her eyes squint. "I'm really tired, so I will leave you now."

"Do you know how to reach your chambers?" She nodded and so did I, in response. "Sleep well, my lady."

"Don't call me that."

"Alright, my princess." she glared at me and a mischievous grin twitched the corners of my lips, my brows wiggling at her in a taunting manner.

"That didn't sound as smooth as you think." My gesture eased her gaze and triggered a small smile out of amusement. "You're so cheeky."

"That's what ladies love about me." A wink directed at Y/n accompanied my sentence, though my eyes soon drifted away from hers to lose in the vastness of the landscape once more.

What a pity that it wasn't as mesmerizing as the princess besides me.

"Thank you for the walk, Kíli." she got a grip on my forearm and planted a slow, careful, chaste kiss on my cheek.

Despite being merely a platonic gesture, I felt my heart speeding up.

My first instinct was to spin my head and try to capture her lips. Due to my quicktemper, I almost couldn't stop myself, but I succeeded just when our lips were mere inches apart.

Her grip tightened and her eyes went from my eyes, to my lips, and back.

"Goodnight, Kíli." she murmured under her breath, slowly loosening the grip and letting her hand fall down my arm, stopping to ghost over my fingers, but quickly retrieving.

I stood there alone for a moment, and I found myself lightly caressing the cheek Y/n had placed a kiss on with my fingertips.

My heart sped up again.

[imaginetonyandbucky]

The Witch and the Warrior

Author Note: The Killer and the Kid has been my number one most requested “more of this” fic (with over 40 requests between tumblr and A03) since I started working at Imagine Tony & Bucky. Working with the idea, I found I had an awful lot more to say. Therefore, I’m going to continue this series as the mood strikes (unlike Helping Hands, which is updated weekly) I hope you enjoy the second part. I’m in outline phase for part three, The Captain and the Consequences.

T’challa, King of Wakanda, son of T’chaka, grandson of Azzuri, the Black Panther, protector of Wakanda, stood in the wreckage of his home and made arrangements for the care of the injured, the honor of the dead warriors, the incarceration of prisoners, and all those tasks that took place at the end of the battle.

The foreigners, the Americans, the rogue Avengers, were weary, blood splattered. Some of them were injured, but none particularly in danger. The silver-blonde boy that Stark had brought with him had a broken collarbone, painful, but not fatal. His sister, Wanda, hovered at his side, even now unable to look away from her brother’s face, unable to take her hand off his arm.

“Sorry about this, your highness,” the Captain said, coming up beside T’challa, looking over the ruins of the audience hall and the subsequent destruction of the courtyards.

“It was a risk I accepted,” T’challa said, his voice deep and thoughtful, “when I granted you sanctuary. That someone would come for you; Hydra, the United Nations. Eventually, you would be discovered.”

“Stark?”

T’challa rolled his eyes -- he was a trained diplomat, but sometimes people could be so… petty. “I deem it unlikely that Stark would lead such as these deliberately into my people’s lands. If he were looking to force you to return, to imprison you, I do not believe he would have arrived here, without his suit.” Beside which, Stark had known where the renegade Avengers were within ten days of their arrival; he’d been working closely (if secretively) with the Wakandan scientists to amplify and ready his Binarily Augmented Retro Framing device, that they might use it to deprogram Sergeant Barnes. He’d also consulted and provided schematics to replace the Winter Soldier’s metal arm that had been destroyed in Siberia.

In short, Tony Stark was, as he always did, looking out for his teammates, whether they knew it or not, whether they appreciated it or not.

T’challa stroked his chin. It was not his place to enlighten these Americans. Wisdom didn’t come from a place of lecture; it was either learned from experience, or it remained unearned.

“<Sire>.” One of his men approached, bowed his head. He spoke in Xhosa, as had been the general order whenever there was information T’challa might not want to share with his guests. That was a ruse that probably wouldn’t last much longer. The Witch had a natural talent for languages. But she was not looking their way at the present. “<They are missing. There are many dead in that direction.>” He slanted a glance at Rogers.

<”Did you find what happened to our friend?”> T’challa did not want to draw Rogers’ attention.

<”He seems to have been with the soldier when they left the compound. Not willing.”>

“Eish,” T’challa swore, and Rogers turned to look. That word, perhaps, T’challa used a little too often.

“Something wrong?”

“Your friend has woken early and is… not where we left him,” T’challa explained. There was no point in concealing it; Rogers would find out soon enough. “He may have taken the ensorcelled Stark with him.”

“Took Tony? Why?”

“You would, perhaps, know better than I.”

[mobile readers, there’s a readmore cut here.] 

Being dragged back to the Wakanda compound like a runaway toddler was pissing Tony off. The Winter Soldier -- who should not have woken up in that mindset and Tony was wondering in the half of his brain that wasn’t otherwise occupied by being pissed off, what had happened that his brainwashing had reset -- had Tony balanced on his hip, the metal arm wrapped around Tony’s waist. The position was only slightly less undignified than wrapped up like a burrito and hanging over the Winter Soldier’s shoulder. But only barely.

Tony made that fucking arm; it shouldn’t be being put to use to contain him.

“You know I’m perfectly capable of walking, right?”

“You know your legs are at least a foot shorter than they used to be, right?” the Winter Soldier snapped back. “And you’ve already proven to be untrustworthy.”

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you, Manchurian Candidate,” Tony said, crossing his arms and leaning back as far as he could. He’d tried this maneuver a few times already, and chances were good he was going to end up falling on his head, but it was possible that the Winter Soldier would lose his grip. “In case you forgot, you tried to kill me once already.”

The Winter Soldier’s steps faltered. “You said that before.” The Winter Soldier stopped his ground eating pace through the thick jungle, dropped Tony to the ground and steadied him, twisted himself into a graceful squat, which put him on eye level with the pint-sized Avenger. “I don’t… I don’t remember. Tell me what I did.”

“You lied,” Tony said, eyes widening, less an accusation and more a revelation. “When I asked if you remembered killing my mom. You said you remembered them all, but you lied. Why would you lie about that? You don’t remember anything you do when you’re out of it, do you?”

The Winter Soldier appeared to consider the question, his gray-blue eyes serious. Finally, he said, soft, “Did you need me to? I killed someone you loved.” He licked his lips, his expression shattering. “Would it have given you comfort?”

Tony shrugged, his feelings a mess of shit and anger shoved in a blender.

The Winter Soldier drew one of his weapons and offered to Tony. “Will revenge make it better?”

Tony scoffed. “I’m not going to shoot you in cold blood,” he said, not taking the weapon. He squinted, then, “Holy shit. You want someone to kill you.”

The Winter Soldier shrugged. “I want someone to stop me. I know what I am, even if I don’t know what I’ve done.”

“Jesus,” Tony said. “Well, it’s not going to be me. I don’t take out Hydra’s trash for them.”

The Winter Soldier holstered the gun. “Are we done, then?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just extended the metal hand to Tony and stood up. Warily, as if expecting the fingers to clamp down, or to drag him back up to the Winter Soldier’s side, Tony took the metal fingers. The Winter Soldier clasped his hand lightly, like a parent with a kid crossing the street. At a much more moderate pace, keeping Tony’s short legs in mind, the Winter Soldier continued back toward the compound.

Tony scowled at the fire, low burning and smokeless, that the Winter Soldier had set up. He was probably going to have to give up and let himself be carried the rest of the way back. They’d made shitty progress that day, and the compound was still another eight hours walk away. At least.

Watching the Winter Soldier tickle fish out of the river had been interesting, at least. He stepped into the water, slow and easy, not even causing a ripple, then put his metal hand down. Time passed and the Winter Soldier hardly moved, breathing slow and shallow, then suddenly in a flurry of motion, he lunged, snapped up and tossed a wriggling catfish onto the shore.

“Get it, get it,” the Winter Soldier said, and Tony rushed forward to struggle with a huge, black fish that was almost half as long as he was, dragging it back into the wood. The Winter Soldier had gutted the fish, wrapped it in leaves, and spitted the whole thing over the fire. After making Tony promise to stay there -- and actually trusting him to do so -- the Winter Soldier disappeared into the jungle and returned with his shirt over his shoulder, stuffed full of a red fruit that was about the size of a lemon and tasted like a cross between a grape and and a cranberry.

They ate piping hot, flakey fish off leaves and Tony found himself leaning against the Winter Soldier as it got darker, aware of his tiny stature and propensity for looking like tiger food. In the curve between the Winter Soldier’s metal arm and his ribs, Tony found a warm, safe nest, and didn’t even mind as the Winter Soldier spread the shirt he’d used as a basket, over Tony’s form. “Sleep, kid,” he said, low and soft, “I’ll keep ya safe.”

“Not a kid,” Tony muttered, but snuggled against the Winter Soldier’s side and let his eyes drift shut.

Steve had seen some strange shit, even before he woke up from being in the deep-freeze for seventy years. But Bucky walking into the Wakanda compound hand in hand with a four-year-old Tony Stark just about took the cake.

And then, even more astounding, was the fact that the Wakandan guard descended, guns at the ready, and rather than Bucky going into defense mode -- Steve had watched that several times, Bucky’s response had always been violence, or fleeing -- he’d just stood there. Tony, on the other hand, had snatched up one of the pistols and pointed it directly at the captain’s head. “Don’t you fucking touch him,” he snapped, weirdly adorable and angry at the same time.

“No one will come to harm, Mr. Stark,” T’challa said, moving into the courtyard with haste. He snapped a few words in that clicking language that the Wakandans spoke.

Bucky gave T’challa a quick bow, answering in the same tongue, his mouth moving quickly through an explanation that Steve couldn’t understand at all.

“I did not know you spoke our tongue,” T’challa said, chagrined.

“I didn’t know it, either,” Bucky said. “Where’s the witch?”

Wanda came out, floating on a cloud of her red-mist magic. “What do you want?”

“Fix it,” Bucky said, indicating Tony with a jerk of his chin.

“Why should I?” Wanda stared down at the little boy, her eyes crackling with red fire. “Maybe, this time, he will grow up to be less terrible. He will have time, to think of the choices he has made. Time, like I had, in that prison.”

“Were your choices better?” Bucky asked, calm, quiet. His voice was deadly, his face unforgiving. “Made the right ones, all the time, did you? And when you didn’t, did you make up for your mistakes? Help heal the harm you’d caused?”

Wanda shivered, the red mist dying under her feet and she lowered heavily to the ground. “No,” she answered.

“Then make better ones,” Bucky urged. “Fix this. You’re the only one who can.”

“I… um,” Wanda started, licking at her lips. She stared around helplessly. Her brother, his arm in a sling, came up behind her, touched her shoulder.

“She can’t,” Pietro said.

“Why not?”

Wanda blinked a few times. “I… I don’t know how. I don’t know what I did the first time. I don’t know how to undo it.”

Tony sighed, throwing his hands up in the air, the disgust and despair weighing oddly on his tiny frame. “Figures.”

Bucky heaved a sigh, then dropped to one knee at Tony’s side. “We’ll figure it out, then,” he said, drawing the boy into a hug. Steve’s jaw dropped as Tony threw his arms around Bucky’s chest, seeking comfort from one of the people who should have been his greatest enemy. Bucky put his arms around the boy and stared at Steve.

“Bucky,” Steve said, walking up. Bucky scooped the boy up and half-turned, hand coming up defensively as if Steve was a threat. “What are you doing?”

“Making better choices,” Bucky said, keeping himself between Steve and the boy.

To Be Continued

Story Note: Eish is a Xhosa word, with a kind of “sheesh” connotations, a very mild swear. Xhosa is an African language, commonly referred to as the “click language.” In Captain America: Civil War, the actor who played T’chaka (John Kani) speaks it and taught it to Chadwick Boseman during the filming. 

[randomfandomimagine]

Nightmares (Dean)

Character: Dean Winchester

Fandom Supernatural

Categories: Reader Insert, Female!Reader, Daughter!Reader, Winchester!Reader, Angst

Title: Nightmares

  Requested by anon:

Hi! Can I request something where you are deans daughter and he finds your sketchbook where you draw your nightmares or something

For the deans daughter who draws her nightmares maybe her first drawings are mostly people who have passed (bobby,Kevin) but the ones that upsets dean the most is a mixed drawing of Ben and Lisa who forgot them and dean on the ground hurt due to hell hounds (sorry if it's a little dark :/ )

 WARNING: Tons of spoilers of the show up until Season 6 or so. Also, this is a bit dark!

When I opened my eyes I realized it was nothing but a nightmare. Another one.

I sat up in the bed, which had turned slightly wet with my own sweat. I was shaking from the fear and my breath was heavy and ragged.

I looked over to my left. Sam slept peacefully on his bed.

I looked over to my right. Dean seemed to be having more of a restless dream, but was still fast asleep as well.

I preferred not to bother any of them and I lied down again, covering myself with the sheets up to my jaw and trying to stop shaking.

I closed my eyes tight when remnants of images coming from my nightmare flashed before my eyes. They were etched in my brain, and they would remain there. They always did.

No matter how much time it passed, I always remembered the horrible dreams. Or at least the harrowing scenarios they displayed.

I still remembered the first one I had. It was about that girl, Jessica, back when I was super little. She just burned in the ceiling, and I never understood how or why.

I shook my head, not wanting to recall such horrible events. Mainly because they actually came true. That was why they were even more painful.

I glanced back at Dean, thinking about waking him up again. But I still didn’t want to. Even if I felt comfortable enough to tell him, or Sam, I couldn’t bring myself to.

I was too scared all the time. Back home, I was scared because of my nightmares. Here with the Winchesters I was scared because I realized they were real and the both of them were a little scary themselves. I had seen them hunting, and it was a frightening thing to witness.

So I just resigned myself to leave the room and try and get some fresh air to hopefully clear my mind. Or to get drowsy enough to go back to sleep and pray that I didn’t get any more nightmares.

So I went to open the door, but something stopped me.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” It was Dean’s raspy and sleepy voice.

I had to slap my hands over my mouth not to scream out loud from the scare. I did not expect him to be awake and to speak up in the silence of the night.

“You scared me!” I hissed as low as I could, seeing as Sam was still in a deep sleep.

“Sorry” Dean stood up and rubbed his hands against his face to sober up a bit. “But you didn’t answer my question”

“I just wanted to get some fresh air, that’s all” I tried to appear calm and nonchalant, but he probably saw through me.

Not because he knew me too well, but because I was too transparent.

“I’m guessing you had a nightmare” He sat down in the edge of his bed. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really” I sat down in my bed as well, thinking that at least talking to him would get my mind off it all.

“Why not?” I just averted my eyes in response to his question. It was complicated.

My mother recently told me that someone called Dean Winchester was my real father. So of course, being the rogue and determined girl I am, I left to look for him. I needed to meet him.

What I did not expect was to find myself with supernatural hunters that travelled the country to kill monsters. Even if that related to my nightmares and their content.

But the thing was that I didn’t know them. Even if Dean was my father and Sam was my uncle. And they were good men, but…

“Trust me, kid” Dean noticed I was absent and preoccupied, so he intervened. “I’ve seen everything, even things you can’t nearly imagine”

“But this…” I mumbled, trying not to wake Sam up. “This is bad, Dean”

I could read in his expression that he knew I could not call him ‘dad’, he had noticed. How could I? He was almost a complete stranger.

To be honest, I didn’t quite understand why he was letting me stay with them. He could kick me out any minute, or take me back home with my mum.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me” He insisted in a grave voice. “I’ll believe you”

“I’m scared” I admitted, feeling even weaker than usual. I was fed up of being vulnerable and trying to appear strong for my mum’s sake. My life would be so much easier without the nightmares. It would be normal and I wouldn’t leave in a constant state of crippling fear.

“Alright, Y/N” Dean stood up from his bed and sat down next to me, in my own bed. “You have nothing to be scared of, because Sammy and I will protect you”

“You can’t protect me from this” I sobbed, feeling so trapped and anguished.

“What do you mean?”

“I have nightmares, Dean” I averted my eyes and began playing with the hem of my shirt with shaky hands. “And they come true”

For a moment, he just frowned in deep thought. He lingered on the silence as I tried to think of something to say to relief the tension and awkwardness of the environment. Luckily, he finally piped up.

“I need to tell you something” He rested his hand on his leg casually and took a deep breath before he continued speaking. “I found your sketchbook”

“What?” I uttered in horror.

“I… I didn’t know those things you drew were nightmares, but…” Dean passed a hand over his mouth restlessly. “Those things definitely happened, all of them”

I frowned in sadness at the thought that all those horrible things I drew, coming from my nightmares, were realer than ever. Because they had happened to them.

“They happened to you and Sam?” A tear fell from my eye, and I knew it was the first of many.

Dean just nodded solemnly, distraught by the expression on his face.

“The first one you drew… Jessica” Dean sighed, his eyes telling me how painful it all was to remember. “She was Sam’s girlfriend before he became a hunter with me”

I began crying, stricken with a pain too great. My nightmares were someone else’s nightmares. Even if they happened to them while they were awake.

Those nightmares of strangers I used to have were apparently about the Winchesters and their lives. Just when I thought that those that weren’t about my family or my friends were nothing but bad dreams.

After a few more seconds of silence, Dean kept talking.

“And the rest of them? You drew our friends… Bobby, Kevin, Charlie… They all died” He frowned and looked down in grief. “You also drew Ben and Lisa forgetting about me, and they were the closest thing I had to a family apart from Sammy”

I remembered vividly how each bad dream made me feel. The unease, the sadness and grief. Realizing they felt that as well was heart breaking.

“Drawing them made me feel better” I cried lowly, unable to hold it in anymore. “It helped me convince myself that maybe some of them weren’t real”

Dean looked up at me, fixing his gentle green eyes on me with pity. He opened his mouth to talk and try to comfort me, but I needed to let out all those things I was bottling up for so long.

“I saw you with the Hellhounds, I saw Sam in the Cage and you both in Hell…” I sniffed through my nose, even if I couldn’t stop crying because it was so sad and harrowing. “And you went through all that…”

Disconsolate, I hid my face in my hands and cried there. An ominous weight settled in my chest, but for once it was probably all sadness and nothing more. Not a hunch, not a feeling that something terrible would happen. This time it was just pain.

“It’s what we do” Dean resigned himself. “Saving people and hunting things…”

“Even if it means losing yourselves along the way” I whispered under my breath, sitting up straight and doing my best to get a hold off myself.

“Are you okay?” He asked me even if we both knew the answer.

“I don’t know what to do…” After I found out the truth about my nightmares, I felt even more lost than usual. “What am I supposed to do?”

“You can stay with us if you want” Dean told me sweetly. “Or if you want to go back home, we’ll give you a ride”

“No, I want to stay” For the first time, it felt like Dean wasn’t a stranger anymore, and neither was Sam. “Maybe my nightmares can be useful for once if they warn me about the danger”

Luckily for me, I rarely ever got any nightmares about my friends or family back home. Even if I was a coward and didn’t tell anyone, hence not being able to help. But since Sam and Dean were living a more dangerous life, I could try and keep them safe while they did to.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah… I’m just worried about Sam”

“He’ll be okay with it” Dean assured calmly. “But you have to be safe and do as we tell you to, okay? That you stay with us doesn’t mean you hunt”

I nodded, understanding what he meant. Obviously, he was scared that I got too into their lifestyle. After all, not even them liked being hunters.

I stood up and hesitated a little. But in the end I gave him a hug, even if it was a little awkward. But I really wanted to show him I was grateful, that I appreciated him. And his brother. My father and uncle, I guess.

“Listen, Y/N” He told me as he softly broke the hug. “We don’t really know why you have those nightmares, but we’ll make sure they don’t become real”

I smiled a little and he grinned back.

I suddenly didn’t feel so scared. Being around Sam and especially Dean made me feel safer, because they were the only ones that could do something about my nightmares.

[chrismaverickdotcom]

Death by Franchise (a Blade Runner 2049 review -- No spoilers)

As I said in my review of The Mountain Between Us, which I knew no-one was really going to care about except for me, I saw the big movie everyone cared about yesterday too and of course I’m going to review it as well. So lets talk about My Little Pony.

Oh, that’s not the movie that everyone is curious about? It’s Blade Runner 2049? FINE! Be that way. (I promise, no spoilers here)

Ok, actually I didn’t see My Little Pony this weekend. I did in fact go to Blade Runner 2049. I was too tired to write up the review last night and figured I’d wait til the morning. I’m actually pretty glad I did. Because that allows me to address something that sort of surprised me, but probably shouldn’t have. Namely, that no one went to go see it.

Ok, not no one. It is going to be the highest grossing movie the box office this week, but it’s going to miss its mark by a lot. It was looking to clear about $50million. It looks like it might come in under $30M. Steph and I went to see it last night and there were a lot of empty seats for a Friday night. A whole lot of empty seats really. Way more than I was expecting.

And I’m pretty sure it was way more than Hollywood was expecting too. Because I think the problem is that in 2017, Hollywood is so addicted to the idea of extending existing IP into marketable franchises, that they forgot one very important detail. NO ONE FUCKING LIKED THE ORIGINAL BLADE RUNNER WHEN IT FIRST CAME OUT. Seriously! The original Blade Runner was produced on a $28M budget. And it managed to gross … drumroll please… $27M domestically. And an additional $6million overseas. That’s it. Yes, it was 35 years ago and that’s more money than it sounds like now, but it’s still a box office failure. Blade Runner LOST money!

So clearly the right thing to do is wait 35 years and bump the budget up an extra $150M and see what happens?

What? That’s crazy, you say? Why would anyone give an extra $150M to a movie that no one really cared about in the 1980s and wait 35 years to make it? Well, if you had that thought, maybe you should be working as a Hollywood producer in charge of green lighting pictures. Because, apparently no one there did.

It probably seems like I don’t like Blade Runner. That’s wrong. I fucking love it. I love it so much that I have the BluRay boxed set which has like five different versions of the movie, and comes with a collectible scale model of Deckard’s car (which my wife doesn’t understand why I keep sealed in the box rather than taking it out to play with or put on a shelf because she’s some kind of savage). I loved the original movie. And I liked this one a lot (may need to see it again to see if grows on me even more). So what went wrong?

Well, I’m not the viewing public. And neither are the rest of the critics on the Internet.

The original Blade Runner is a hard movie to watch. It really is. It’s slow and complex and convoluted and really doesn’t make a fuck ton of sense. It’s also amazing and innovative. It is visually gorgeous. It’s a film that changed the sci-fi industry. It changed the film industry. It changed cinematography and special effects. It’s a film that I have studied in film classes, screen writing classes, literature classes and cultural studies classes. In many ways it’s a masterpiece. And in many ways, that basically makes it school work.

People don’t like schoolwork.

Except, sometimes, when something becomes important enough it gets lucky… and over 35 years it develops enough prestige that it gets a cult following, and then people do like it. That’s Blade Runnner. The first one. And maybe, in 2052, that will be this one too. Maybe. It’s not there yet.

And that’s the thing. People weren’t really clamoring for a sequel to Blade Runner. At least not a lot of people. There were some loud people. But those are the hardcore sci-fi fans. These are the people who are going to see any sci-fi film anyway. What you need, if you want to justify a $185million budget, is to get in regular people. People who just want to enjoy an evening at the movies and not work so hard. Yes, the first film is a science fiction film and maybe that makes it feel like a Hollywood blockbuster. But it isn’t. It’s an artistic thought piece and exercise in intellectual film making. And it’s one that doesn’t actually have a built-in audience of nostalgia fans the way the Star Wars or Star Trek franchises do. Turning Blade Runner into a franchise and expecting it to be successful at the level that justifies that budget makes as much sense as throwing $185M at Roshomon or Battleship Potemkin. And if you’re asking yourself “what the fuck are those?!?!” then I have two answers for you: “they’re brilliant” and “exactly!”

As for the movie itself? Well, like the original film, it tries to do a lot. And in fact it succeeds and doing a lot. But in trying to live up to it’s own legend, it maybe tried to do too much for the forum that it had to exist in.

Goal #1: It had to be part of the franchise and capitalize on the nostalgia of the first film, because it’s 2017 and apparently that’s what we fucking do now. This is the place where it probably failed the hardest. Mostly because, as I pointed out, there really ISN’T any franchise nostalgia for Blade Runner. The people who are the biggest fans of it are actually film and hard sci-fi fans who don’t care about that. So the film tries to manufacture it by Rogue Oneing it. In particular there are two cameos in this film that just don’t belong there. One at least sorta kinda makes plot sense. The other, which seems like it’s there just to make ME specifically excited… just doesn’t work at all. It is totally inconsequential, other than to say “hey, remember this… from the Blade Runner? Have some more Blade Runner in your Blade Runner. We’re Blade Runnering this shit up, yo!” This is not that kind of movie. It didn’t need it. Both could have just been removed.

Goal #2: Be an interesting thought piece that uses hard science fiction to comment on the world around us. This worked a lot better. In fact, I was really engaged in the storyline. One of the things this does really well is extend the themes of the first movie (consumerism, fear of technology, the nature of humanity, capitalism and government run amuck) by exploring it with NEW plot lines instead of just rehashing the old ones. In particular the main plot line, while related to the first film, is really its own thing that kind of boldy goes in its own direction and really draws me in. I cared about it. I cared about how the character would proceed through it. I could see that it was designed to dovetail into the B plot line (which was far more related to the first film) from the very beginning, but I wanted to see the execution and see how these two ideas intersected. If I had a problem with it, it is that once the B plot really gets rolling in the third act, it sort of overtakes the A plot. And I was far more interested in the A plot. I felt a little cheated because I was more invested in the new characters and their story. That said, I was still on board.

Goal #3: Expand the world. Here is where I was most impressed ands consequently, maybe the most let down. One of the great things about the world of Blade Runner is that it is clearly set up to be lived in. While the first film focuses on Deckerd, there are clearly interesting and engaging storylines set up for Rachel, Roy, Priss, Gaff and Tyrell. This does much the same thing, but maybe too well. While the first film leaves me with questions that I feel comfortable with pondering for the rest of my life, this one left me with questions that I just wanted more answers to. There are C, D and E plot lines that are very interesting and have little if nothing to do with the concepts from the additional film. And yet, because the world is built so well and is so expansive, they work in seamlessly. And they are interesting. My favorite character in the film by far is Joi (played by Ana de Armas). I won’t say why, because of spoilers, but she was great. She was interesting and I saw that they were doing something very original with her. I was all-in every time she was on screen and missed her when she wasn’t. I wanted to know more about her story and her motivations. She could have been the whole movie on her own. But since she doesn’t have her own movie she serves as the C plot for this one. And she is so unimportant to the A plot and the B plot that she could be removed from the film entirely without affecting the narrative. In fact, the Wikipedia entry for the movie has a very thorough recap of the plot (which you shouldn’t read, because again spoilers) and yet, it doesn’t mention her AT ALL in the entry, other than the cast list at the time I am writing this. And that leaves it somewhat unbalanced. One of the most interesting things from the entire film for me regards Joi’s relationship with Mariette (played by Mackenzie Davis). I was fascinated by the story that is hinted at by the film, but Mariette is the F or G plot line at best, and not only is she not mentioned on the Wikipedia page, I’m betting most people who have seen the film and are reading this are saying “who the fuck is Mariette? What is he talking about? I better google it… Ohhhhhh….”

And that’s sort of the problem with the movie. Like the first film, there’s just a lot going on. However, the first film didn’t even try to be a movie for the masses. This wants to be. And the masses are just not going to get it. The first film was sort of a miracle of working within budget constraints. It was expensive for the day, but does a lot of film innovation to make it look even bigger. This film didn’t have that. It just burned money on special effects. It also threw a lot of money at getting a good cast. Obviously they wanted Harrison Ford back, and they cast Ryan Gosling as the new lead. But they didn’t particularly need Robin Wright (although she’s really good because she’s a phenomenal actress). And Jared Leto is…. there. Basically he Jared Leto’s about, and… well… probably isn’t worth it. He brings his name to the film and not much else. He’s clearly trying to do his best impression of Joe Turkel as Eldon Tyrell, but it doesn’t really work. His character, Niander Wallace, is just different and every time he was onscreen I just saw Jared Leto doing his schtick. Everyone else was great, particularly Armas, as I said before, but also Sylvia Hoeks.

But with that much going on, the film needed to make some choices. It is more than 45 minutes longer than the original, a film that already seemed slowly pace. As I said, my favorite part of it, the Joi plot line, could have been removed entirely with no incident. But there was another way to go. It probably shouldn’t have been a movie at all. At two hours and forty-four minutes, it should have either been cut to two hours or expanded to eight. Much like Westworld, a film from 1976 that no one was really begging for a sequel to, and yet became a very successful HBO series last year, this would have thrived if it was set to a slow enough pace that it could have been explored in depth on television. My problems with Joi and Mariette could have been solved easily if they were given more time to breathe. The Westworld tv show had a $100 million budget and the extra time really enhances the story. We have reached a point where television is prestigious enough to allow this to happen. It feels like Blade Runner 2049 may only be a theatrical because it’s “supposed to be” and it could perhaps better be served another way.

So, my recommendation for this one is hard. I enjoyed it. I think it’s a great film. But I can’t really recommend going to see it for everyone. You have to ask yourself, would you really really really have paid to see the original Blade Runner in the theater if it were released in 2017 without the legend of what it has become behind it? Would you have enjoyed it? How about if it was 45 minutes longer. Can you watch nearly 3 hours of Blade Runner without a bathroom break? Did you enjoy Cloud Atlas? Because I did. I fucking loved Cloud Atlas. But if that’s if you didn’t… well, you might want to wait til you can watch this at home with a pause button and four different directors cut versions.

★★★⅓☆ (3.33 out of 5 stars) for regular people 🍪🍪🍪🍪🥕 (4 fucking cookies and a carrot because apparently the broccoli emoji isn’t standardized yet) for film or sci-fi geeks.

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Death by Franchise (a Blade Runner 2049 review — No spoilers) was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom