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drowninginblox · 2 years ago

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My thoughts on Cole Cassidy/Jesse McCree‘s real name

I want to talk about this ever since Jesse got a rebrand but I haven’t really had the space to talk about it. Or whenever I try to talk about it it just came off as a little weird. So this is me trying to alleviate that urge to ramble.

Again…

Sorry

By the way, all of my thoughts are going to be taking place in Canon. I already know about Blizard being dicks, and all that other crap. All of what I am going to word vomit is my own in universe justification for Jesse deciding to change his name or going back and using his real name.

So. Cole Cassidy.

Not his real name

I don’t like the idea of Cole being his real name. Not because it’s a bad name but because of the headcannons I have about his family.

I like to think that Cole grew up in a very rough and tumble household you know? Dad wasn’t really there and if he was, he was a shitty parent. And mom, if she was there, either worked her ass off to take care of her kid and deadbeat husband, or was just as much as of a dead beat as dad.

Regardless of the tragic backstory, I don’t think Jesse would willingly go through with the name he was born with

If anything, I think he would carve a new name for himself one that history will remember- hence Jesse McCree

TLDR very much Eugene Fitzherbert

Who does he tell about his real name/changing his name?

I don’t think he tells anyone in overwatch his real name. I think they all assume that his “real name” is Jesse McCree for the longest time because that’s what he refers to himself as and that’s what The Wanted posters say

That, and I think he has documentation under that name to further solidify it. (thanks, Ashe)

But if he had to tell anyone in overwatch, and I mean anyone, I think it would only be two people maybe three.

Those people being in no specific order

Angela Ziegler

Genji Shimada

Anna Ahmari

If you’re in overwatch fandom, I think you can assume why each of these people would qualify for the honor of knowing his real name. But for the sake of me rambling, I’m going to indulge in my thoughts and feelings, as to why each person knows

For Angela, I think it would be in a life or death situation. Very much when he lost his arm. If he sincerely thought that he was going to die I think that he would confess a few things to Angela. One being Jesse McCree isn’t his actual name. Now would it be the first thing he would tell her- absolutely not, but it would definitely be one of those things. He’d do it to have overwatch get in contact with his mother if he does pass in the line of duty. (I have some headcannons about his mom, but that’s a whole ‘Nother conversation.)

For Genji, I can see it both as a life or death situation, or as a very niche, private, casual conversation. Just for the exclusivity of Genji knowing who Jesse was before he got into overwatch. Trust issues and all that from one Jussie and Genji, or for us getting to know each other.

Now for Anna. Again, life or death situation. However i prefer to think this would be a accidental happenstance. Very much a “I got drunk and told my mom somethings she shouldn’t have known.” I think that if he were to disclose this information to her, he would also add how much he hates his dad and/or extended family.

Regardless, of who he tells no one will tell anyone else about this information

And no, I am not giving Gabe the benefit of the doubt when it comes to knowing Jesse’s true identity. I don’t care about the father/son relationship HCs. I think that Jesse’s real name is a one of those things that Jesse doesn’t feel comfortable telling Gabe. And that is completely fine!

Now, when it comes to changing his name- the first person he would tell after all this time would probably be Genji.

Then Tracer. Then anyone else who is new or hasn’t gotten the memo yet.

Going off of this train of thought, I think Reinhart would have a hard time getting it down. Not out of disrespect! Just out of hazy memory, and- like- the habit of referring to Jesse as Jesse for so long. The same can be said for junkrat as well. Mostly cus he probably refers to him as cowboy or Clint Eastwood (cus of Roadie)

Outside of overwatch, I think the people having the hardest time getting down this new name is the media. Hell I think the talon is more progressive than the media. Most of their team are gay so

Now we’re onto my favorite part- how do I utilize this fact in my fics

Ever since blizzards, melt down/the overwatch two trailer, I’ve been setting most of my fics in that time of the team is still getting together, but they aren’t on the same page yet

To elaborate- the team that we see in Paris are currently all traveling in a pack. Meanwhile, the rest of the people who are on the overwatch roster i(n game) are currently in groups/on their own in different parts of the world

For example, Jesse and Hanzo are traveling together. Mainly for my own shipping pleasure! (Fic coming out about that soon by the way)

I also like to think that road hog and junk rat are finally getting out of that outback after being inprisoned by the junker queen

The junker queen maybe trying to conquer the world. Effectively canoeing her way off of Australia and into New Zealand

The new Kitsune character and Dva are meeting up somewhere. Probably at like a fan meet in greet or something (I have a lot of head cannons about the kitsune girl)

Just a lot of smaller stuff like that you know?

So, in this weird scattered-about moment in overwatch lore/limbo, I like to think that some people know when other people don’t and that’s OK. Sometimes people won’t know until last minute, especially in overwatch’s line of work.

In fact, you can see in my latest my HaiNoon/ McHanzo or… Ig McGenji fic? BITE. I mean Bite. (Bite is such a gray area my God. Like it has McHanzo implications, but it also has McGenji interaction for the main meat of it so you know… I’m rambling!)

Bite has -throughout the fic- Cole acknowledging himself as Cole, but he’s letting Genji refer to him as Jesse. it is until the end of the fact that Jesse corrects Genji. In that same story, while I was writing it, I was thinking about what the other characters refer to Cole as. And I don’t think he’s gotten the time or courage to tell them what name he wants to be preferred by yet.

They were on the battlefield like not even a few days ago for crying out loud. Priorities need to be set.

So yeah

Thanks for reading.

#jesse mccree #cole cassidy #rambles #fandom rambles #small but important to me

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megashadowdragon · 2 years ago

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We already know who Young Griff really is This video doesn't really present any new brilliant piece of evidence to Aegon's true identity, all the things mentioned here have already been discussed to death. If anything, it's more of a polemic with staunch resistance to the fact that we already have plenty of hints that point into one particular direction and it should be clear to anyone who reads "A Dance with Dragons" without too much bias (since we can't be totally unbiased, myself included: wow, I said it out loud) and calling out the weird double standards people have towards this guy, who isn't a perfect prince by any stretch of the imagination and won't be as universally accepted as people insist, as well as brief mention on how JonCon and Cersei are far more likely to be his undoing. SPOILER (I guess?) Young Griff's true identity is one of those "mysteries" that aren't really mysteries, just like R+L=J should clear to anyone who read "A Game of Thrones", yet while the contrarianism regarding R+L=J is somewhat niche, the contrarianism regarding the truth of Aegon being a Blackfyre is particularly strong, from Martell cultists and "neutral experts" alike, who insist that there isn't enough proof and we will likely never know. Apparently, the sheer impossibility of his survival, the earlier drafts of ADWD containing a mention of a sword, the Golden Company, "black or red, a dragon is still a dragon", "cloth dragon" and "slayer of lies" aren't enough. I suppose that, unless someone in TWOW straight up says "this is a Blackfyre", the neutral experts will remain unconvinced. Though, I do believe that we will get a confirmation in TWOW, but unless it's 100% direct, people will remain unconvinced. END OF SPOILER

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The question isn't his identity its how will dany depose him and expose him without being called a kinslayer , I believe that's where Jon will come in as the true son of Rhaegar he will be essential in exposing faegon and I think the solution is him claiming rhageal , varys plans on him marrying dany and claim one of her dragons both plans will fail , faegon already missed his chance to marry dany by leaving her behind and will likely marry someone else to secure his throne , and while I do believe he has the ability to ride a dragon being one of the 3 heads dany needs to to face the long night , but unlike the show which butchered the claiming dragons ritual we know from hotd that claiming a dragon is more then just having dragon blood you also need to know high valyeren to command the Dragon but also the strong personality to make them do your bidding, faegon as far as we know lacks both of these sinces be was so sheltered he might not know high valyeren and he clearly lacks the personality , I believe dany will test faegon by having him try to claim one of her dragons and he will fail but Jon will succeed claiming the Dragon named after the man faegon claims to be the son off which will place doubt in faegons legitimatcy faegons identity being put into question is already foreshadowed by varys himself that because dany isn't with him Nobody will take you seriously not imagine him failing to claim a dragon but his supposed basterd half brother succeeds.Show less

#asoiaf #asoiaf theories #asoiaf theory #A Song of Ice and Fire #a song of ice and fire theory #young griff #fake aegon #faegon

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justbagworm · 5 months ago

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Don't mind me, just contemplating the world and making it relevant to writing...

So, yknow how people are always like 'you can tell when someone studies something because they write about it in a very detailed manner?' I raise you: the weird shit the human body does when you follow a sport or a physical discipline for a very long time. I love reading fics and books by people who have ACTUALLY engaged with what they're writing about, because you can tell they know what they're talking about when they mention something that seems utterly wacky but is, in fact, true.

Source? I'm a rock climber and a writer. The sheer NUMBER of times I've gone back and reread my writing, only to realize that something I've incorporated is very niche climber slang and/or knowledge, even when the piece doesn't relate to climbing at all, is astounding.

That very bad segue will now allow me to gush about my past with climbing, because I miss it and I see my own little idiosyncracies from it and get nostalgic. Elaboration after Keep Reading!!!

The first thing you need to know about rock climbing is the SHOES. Anyone who has ever gone to a proper rock gym will be commiserating from that word alone. Climbing shoes are similar to pointe shoes, in that they can EFFIN HURT. In every other way, they're pretty much the opposite tho lol. Climbing shoes are generally about a size to a size and a half smaller than your normal shoe size, though if you're just getting your first pair you'd probably be best sticking to the one size smaller rule of thumb. Personally, my street shoe size is 9 1/2, whereas I comfortably wear an 8 to climb. The reason is that the shoes are designed to curl your toes under, which makes them stronger, thus allowing you to bear all of your weight on an area which can be smaller than a US quarter. If you tried to do that in street shoes, your toes would bend backwards and break. People who don't know climbing would probably say that at a gym, the climbers would wear street shoes, while on real rock they would wear boots, which is actually a terrible idea. (Like really. Boots would cut your dexterity too much to actually climb.)

That's another interesting thing about shoes, actually - the social norms. No sane or respectable climber wears their shoes in the bathroom, on the street, or pretty much anywhere they could pick up gross germs. Why? Because the same places your shoes are touching, so are your hands, your elbows, your knees, and occasionally your face. Your hands will inevitably wind up in contact with your mouth at some point, and if you've forgotten to wash your hands and someone has just dragged bathroom germs onto the climbing wall, good luck with that.

You would think after all that care, climbing shoes are really pristine then, right? PFFFFT! No. Depending on how new they are and how stubborn the climber is, shoes can be the most ratty things in existence. They are, at minimum, scuffed as shit. More likely, they're scuffed as shit, smudged with climbing chalk, have holes worn in the rubber on the toes from use, and when not on a climber's feet they may or may not have fabric bananas sticking out of them. (The bananas may be regional, however.) About the only consistent qualifier for climbing shoes being usable I've ever seen is 'do they make me slip off the wall? No? Good to go, then.' Obviously I'm a recreational climber, of course, because I highly doubt the big names would climb with a shoe that had the innards sticking out, so bear that in mind.

So, putting aside the shoes, because we don't have time to unpack brands of shoes, the varying opinions on resoling, pricing, and their inherently replaceable nature, I mentioned weird shit a la human body. For rock climbing, that means doing things like hanging off of door frames, heel hooking to pull yourself up from the sofa, pivoting on your feet without moving literally anything else, etc, etc. (This is, of course, my own experiences.) Allow me to elaborate:

Personally, I have no core strength. None. Nada. And yet, I can still pull myself up from a completely prone position as long as I have something to hook my foot around. Fence? Yup. Corner of a wall? Sure. The bottom edge of a couch? Child's play. Give me the tiniest anchor for one foot, and suddenly I'm vertical. Hooray! I literally cannot do sit-ups without hiccuping so hard I feel like I'm going to puke, but heel-hooks to pull myself up are so ingrained in me that I can (and do) do them half-asleep. I do this because my legs were always my main source of power and control as a climber, which for me led into figuring out the best and easiest way to capitalize on that. Woo climbing!

Of course, that's not to say that my arms were unaffected. The corners of walls are like launchpads for me. Why should I exert energy on shifting my direction when it's easier and more efficient to grab a corner or a pole and let my current momentum carry me into my turn? That's absurd. I will say, though, that's definitely something I only do in places I'm familiar with - the idea of throwing myself bodily into a person on the other side of a corner because I'm moving like a moron is HIGHLY unappealing.

Probably the biggest thing about climbing that is noticeable to those 'in the know', I think, is the way we carry our arms. When I'm using my arms - carrying something, gesturing, even just wiggling my fingers - my shoulder comes up, my muscles engage, and I use the energy I need to. When I'm not doing anything, my arms are dead weight, essentially. My shoulders aren't engaged, nor are my elbows, until I need to DO something with them. The joints hang, because that leaves my energy in reserve for when I actually need it. That's a habit I developed from shaking out soreness on longer route climbs, because loosening your limbs entirely to shake them out helps a lot. Also, why hold yourself with your chest to the wall and your arms all scrunched up when that's just stealing valuable energy? Hanging from your extended arms (shoulders engaged now, you heathen) allows you better vantage, and it takes significantly less energy. So, the same habit carries into daily life. It's actually pretty fun to play 'spot the climber' because the shoulders can be a pretty big tell!

There's a lot of other little things like slang (chips, jugs, down holds, dynos, bat hangs, traverses, first sends, first ascents, rainbow roading, etc.), routines, gym ettiquette, and stuff that only gets learned through experience or talking to someone with the experience. It's like that for all things, and it genuinely makes me so happy to see someone whose passion for a discipline or a hobby leaks into their writing because it gives me a little giggle or a moment of, 'hey! I know that reference!' and makes me happy. So yeah, this is probably incoherent and uncohesive af, but that's my thoughts! Rant over! :D

#rock climbing x writing #cool stuff #rambles and thoughts #bagworm rambles #writing #venn diagram of hobbies

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xandri-art · 1 year ago

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I want this blog to be a place where I can keep most of my art in one place, but I also made it because I wanted a place where I can post more of my more "weird" art and originals without feeling so self conscious.

I don't want it to just become an extension of my main blog. I like doing the cutesy or silly fan arts because those are also important to me, but I also want to have the freedom to explore and express more uncomfortable or complex things.

Going forward, I want to be more diligent about posting most of my fan art on main, (@cuppa-ale) and then reblogging it here. Like how I post OCs on my OC blog (@cuppa-crud) and then share it here. And then everything else in between.

I often think about my original projects and plans that I have for them, but I realize that I haven't actually talked or posted much about them, and so I think that most people who find and follow this blog don't really know what that entails. So maybe I should talk more about them.

I've spent a lot of time agonizing over how to curate my art places online, to the point where I still feel self conscious about being passionate about anything and actually sharing that passion, which should be the whole point. Just, so much anxiety and uncertainty from past experiences and often not knowing what to think, or what to make of things.

I feel like that has made it very, very hard to find my "niche", because I am so consumed by self-curation and just feeling lost and out of place no matter where I go. I feel like I have to constantly scrutinize myself, and I never truly feel like I belong or that I will be accepted- but at the same time, I have also isolated myself and haven't branched out much as a form of self-protection, also due to this hyper-vigilance and doubt.

It's only been recently that I can scroll through sites without feeling overwhelmed by a sense of dread and anxiety, and even then I can't stay on for long.

I want so badly to be interested and curious and have passion for things and to reach out. It's just also that I don't want to have to carefully curate and censor everything I make out of fear or to be accepted, either. Or have to refrain from posting things out of fear, which I believe defeats the purpose of having an art blog at all/being here at all. I'm getting older, I don't want that. I just want to be real and for people to be real with me.

And as far as original projects go, I know that it will not be for everyone, and that there's things I'm willing to depict which I know may be uncomfortable for others- like weird relationships between adult characters and underage characters (not sexual unless in a one-sided way on the younger character's part, but still just... weird), or pseudo-sexual nightmare fuel based on my own specific experiences.

And the truth is, I don't know how people will respond to those things, or how they will interpret or misinterpret them. All I know is what they mean to me, and the things I want to convey through them. They are personal and I want to do it for myself, but also for anyone who it may resonate with. And I want to be able to share them.

I'm saying this because you will either find that out through here, or by seeing the projects themselves, which I do plan to have the appropriate warnings for on their own sites/blogs. And I still will not post anything "explicit" here, to be clear.

Basically if you didn't sign up for that, you are free to unfollow/block/etc.. This is the personal art blog of a nobody weirdo online and I will not cater to people who might eat my face if they get something other than what they followed for, or otherwise.

I still feel out of place, and I don't know where I should go in terms of an online presence. It may wind up being that I migrate from here to somewhere else one day. Or have posts here and on main fizzle out over time and become rarer while working on things elsewhere. But for now I want to make this work, and most of all, focus on doing things and being passionate about them, truly.

TL;DR: I have GOT to start posting more about my weird and alienating OCs.

#Xandri Speaks #i'm just tired of my 'online life' feeling like a source of anxiety instead of fun #'cause it feels like a (metaphorical) nuclear bomb is abt to go off any second cuz someone decides they don't like u #or your work #and i don't want to feel that way in what's supposed to be a creative space #again: I'm getting older and I don't want that. I've had enough of that

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lololollywrites · 2 years ago

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So I’m honestly looking for help or advice here. I’ve gone my entire life believing that I’m neurotypical, despite never quite feeling like anyone else or fitting in. I just always thought I was... I don’t know. Quirky, weird. It’s mostly been internalized. I doubt my family would agree, for example, despite any one of them being the first to say that I’m a loner with special interests (they don’t know the half of it - not about tumblr or fanfiction, for example) who has carved out my own little niche of the world in which I can feel most comfortable (academia and travel, amongst other things). “Oh, Lauren’s the smart one who corrects our grammar and doesn’t want a typical life and doesn’t notice when men hit on her and can talk for hours about anything and remembers every detail of her childhood! She was reading novels at 6 years old, isn’t that funny?!”

But recently I’ve come across online content about ASD in adult women and how it looks different than we have long been told (and therefore how it gets overlooked and undiagnosed) and, well. It’s been resonating with me. Hard. I’m not necessarily struggling with life, but I’m also lacking a long-term relationship, a core friend group (it’s hard to fully connect with people or reveal my full personality, though part of that is also because I move a lot), and am finding myself more and more alone. Which is okay for the most part. It is. Honestly, the idea of sharing my apartment and giving up decision-making autonomy and even decorative control stresses me out. I’ve tried to work on myself by expanding my comfort zone - I’ve worked at it my entire life, which is why I traveled - but also... what if I could understand myself better? What if there’s more to it? (I did discover that there might be more but it got long, so... sorry in advance. But if you can relate, I would LOVE it if you did read and could help me!)

I just took the RAADS-R assessment (a bit frustrating, as many of my answers would generally depend on the situation and there was no option for that); I tried my best to be conservative and practical with my selections. I still scored a 104. Scores range from 0-227, and a score of 65 is when ASD is considered (and even likely), though obviously one online test is not enough for a diagnosis. Non-autistic people can score as high as 90, apparently (and autistic people can score as low as 44), so 104 is not conclusive, but it’s made me think.

It’s sort of a relief in a way, but it’s also something I don’t think my family would ever be on board with or understand since I’m the “normal”, stable, level-headed, successful one. Which obviously doesn’t preclude autism (honestly many of these traits have helped me tremendously), but there are so many misconceptions out there. And they love me and mean well, but I know they’d also ask why it matters, since I’m 33 years old and have done fine until now. But they don’t know what it feels like to scratch at your skin and never truly feel like you’ve figured yourself out. Why you’re different and why nothing has ever made sense. Why other people are so infuriating.

My traits? Well, they don’t all fit. Or at least I didn’t think so until I started typing them out.

I am easily overwhelmed by social situations (I can’t stand nightclubs and had an anxiety attack before I first went out in college), but I’ve gotten better. I’ve practiced. Interrupting can be a problem for me because I get excited when people say things that interest me. I don’t find sarcasm or jokes or social cues difficult to understand, but I’ve also... practiced. I’m very, very aware of what I say, how I act, and how others perceive me, though this has become more natural with age. I was always so gullible as a kid that it was a joke in my family. I’m compassionate and empathetic to a fault; I believe the best in people, which has hurt me. Textures and noises don’t particularly bother or overwhelm me, but I did once burst into tears in a Shanghai bar because it was too much. Just... too much. I never once believed in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy and grilled my parents with very specific questions regarding why I should be expected to (though only when my little sister wasn’t around). Despite this, between the ages of 5-7, I slept at the very edge of my pillow so as so leave plenty of room for my parents to take my tooth in the middle of the night and not accidentally wake me, as I knew it would be embarrassing for them and potentially also wake up my sister.

I once slept in an inflatable raft for an entire summer as a kid because I felt like it was a safe cradle. I used to be such a perfectionist that my parents considered homeschooling me. I got in trouble for reading too quickly because teachers thought it was impossible to complete the assignments at the rate I did. I always completed all the group work at school - not because my group mates took advantage of me (though there was a little of that), but because I couldn’t stand what they turned in to me and wanted to do it myself. Travel was my way of proving to myself that I didn’t need the same daily routine; I learned to create my safe space wherever I was in the world. I didn’t want my worries and anxiety to limit my experiences, so I didn’t let it. Then travel just became a new part of my comfort zone. I would self-soothe and reassure myself it would be okay by imagining my new safe space, which would always involve my computer, my Kindle, an internet connection, and being alone. With those things, I’d be okay.

I used to talk so fast as a kid that my mom joked I should be the person who spoke at the end of radio commercials (when they share all the legal disclaimers at high speed). I’ve practiced that too and gotten better, but I always need to be aware of my rate of speech. I went into teaching to sort of... practice public speaking, eye contact, and increasing my confidence (as well as to try to build that natural cadence). And it’s helped. This has always led me to the assumption that yes, see, I’m neurotypical. Everyone has these thoughts and foibles. When I discovered fanfiction in high school I told everyone about it, mind-blown at how miraculous it was, before I realized that people were looking at me funny and thought I was weird. So I stopped. And then discovered online communities.

Even as a 24 year-old, on a Fulbright orientation in an Indonesian hotel, sitting in a circle on the floor in a group of 30 fellow Fulbrighters about to embark on a year-long placement around the country, I apparently talked too much. I had no idea. I was two-months fresh off a year in China and we were participating in ice breakers, sharing advice and travel stories, and I thought I was being helpful. I felt free - finally I was in a community of fellow travelers, and I guess I let my guard down. My family couldn’t relate to all of my China stories and eventually got bored, and I was still processing my experience. I thought that these fellow travelers cared what I had to say. That it was safe. One of the girls I liked (and we did later become friends when she apologized months later) came up to me after one of these sessions and said “As much as I like your stories, Lauren, don’t you think you talked too much?” I was mortified. I totally shut down. I felt pushed to the side in that group - my only real friends, looking back, were the few other loners, including one girl who openly discussed her ASD. We were in contact for years after that and we naturally understood each other. She asked me to talk *more* about China with genuine interest. Maybe that says something.

Anyway. I’m having a bit of an emotional moment right now. I guess this could all be nothing. Or something. I know maybe I should pursue an official diagnosis, but I don’t know if that’s worth it or not. I trust people here. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Or have you self-diagnosed at any point? Does the truth of that label impact your life, and in what ways? Thank you. And sorry for the very, very long ramble. (And that’s something I’ve become accustomed to doing - apologizing!) And I truly hope I haven’t offended anyone or made it seem as though I’m acting like this is a confirmed diagnosis. That’s not it at all - I am very unsure. I just truly would appreciate some guidance. ❤️

#this seems so personal but i'm not sure what else to do #this has been eating at me for weeks now #asd #autism

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tofindloveinpoison · 4 years ago

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Iconic Fanfictions ive read two years ago and what I currently remember of them:

I will premise this by saying that these fanfics were famous only in certain specific niches of the internet, and that when i say that a work is badly written or i critique it in anyway it?s just my opinion from what i vaguely remember, whihch might not be correct.

Fanfics below the cut: filthy lucre, asotm, twist and shout, the hat and lung fics, anatomy of a fall, throam, unholyverse. feelfree to add what you remember of “famous fanfics” you’ve read.

tw for mentions of: sexual assault, violence, animal abuse, pedophilia and some other upsetting topics.

The Milk Fic

Oh my God this was bad but not nearly as extreme as other fics. An iconic and shocking read i do not recommend, but if you really want to read it it will not ruin your life, your month at most.

From what i remember at least the sex was consensual aaaaaaand i don’t remember any other good/decent aspects about it.

Very famous, a lot of ppl have read it, gerard way said it was “well-written” but honestly it wasn’t.

( original? ryden version) 4/10 because of lack of actual crimes.

Filthy Lucre

So bad i don’t remember the plot. They’re prostitutes i think? there definitely was an abusive relationship and the sex scenes were so bad i had to skip all of them, meaning i read the whole thing in half an hour.

Really terrible, they don’t end up toghether and that’s the only interesting element. I recomend no one reads this unless you are literally dying of boredom.

(frerard version) 1/10 because its a completed work, but at what cost

Twist and Shout

This is considered one of the good ones and you know what? for iconic fanfiction standards it’s not bad at all, decently-written with actual characters that don’t feel, like most fanfic characters, like bad ooc versions of the original.

How about the overcomplicated plot tho? I don’t remember a thing except for the homophobia (its set in the 50s-60s), the war, the Elvis songs, one cute sad beach scene and one of the protagonists dying of aids. Maybe they also watch star trek,idk; lots to unpack.

If you want to suffer and you have lots of free time i recommend it, i skipped most of the sex scenes but there is an actual plot so that was not a problem.

(original Destiel version) 8/10 bc I don’t remember how they handled the aids thing but it made me uncomfortable, might be just bc of the upsetting subject matter but i don’t remember

The Hat Fic

DO NOT READ THIS THING. Go read the milk fic if you want weird but not this one please. A milk enema is NOTHING. Contains animal abuse and i don’t remember how consensual the whole thing was.

I CAN ASSURE YOU THIS MAKES ME WANT TO PUKE TO THIS DAY I FEEL SICK WRITING THIS. There is a whole subset of early phanfiction centered on being as disgusting and upsetting as possible and i think this started it.

I higly doubt anyone got off on this but still the possibility unsettles me.

(original phan version ) -8233983743764346/10 should be illigal to talk about it. We should all agree to Damnatio Memoriae this thing.

A splitting of the Mind

Some people insist on treating this as one of the good iconic fics but it’s bad.

So bad its actually an interesting read if you feel like analizing some text, trying to see what is so appealing about it, despite its evident flaws.

The age gap is 19-16 so not as bad as the Other Iconic mcr Fanfic About Doves that i did not read bc from what i remember it was basically pedophilia/grooming but i might be wrong. God the bar is so low

Portrayal of mantal illness and trauma was truly a shitshow, the writing was not great but also not horrible. The sexual assault elements upset me greatly but it might be just bc of the subject matter

pros: unreliable narrator done decently, ray toro’s character saw the future looking in cereal, characters are characters and not merely names (not to be confused with actual good characterization), nothing else.

(original frerard version) 5/10 for the effort honestly, but i do not recommend this unless you are mentally ready for some heavy topics handled poorly.

The Lung Fic

This was written with the goal of shocking the reader, in the same vein as all hat fic/ milk fic copycats.

Should be more upsetting, given it contains gore, pedophilia and a bunch of other disgusting madness (maybe mpreg?), but it just reads as a fanfiction taboo list.

Not worth reading at all, clearly intentionally designed to shock and disgust to the point where it’s obvious.

0/10 i don’te remember which version, irrelevant, don’t waste your time

Anatomy of a fall

Contains ghosts, high school au, possibly resurrection or death, idk.

I don’t remember this being particularly offensive in any way, but its been a long time. Then again i did not read the sex scenes so it might contain necrophilia and i wouldn’t know. (i checked and no necrophilia, just “weird supernatural sex”)

is it well written? no, but it’s not outragiously badly-written. Is it funny sometimes? yes.

In the context of this list, this might be a good one, in any other context probably not. I might be biased bc i love ghost stories in general and this one does not contain sexual assault if i remember correcly. (The bar is soooo low)

(original? frerard version) 7/10 bc ghosts and funny aND IT HAS ILLUSTRATIONS (vietnamese translation available)

The Heart Rate of a Mouse

Good but not in the classical meaning of the word. It contains some Hot TakesTM on human sexuality, substance abuse and unhealthy relationship(s).

Its set in the 70s so the homophobia is there and she is thriving. Wonderful internalized homophobia, really 10/10 for that.

The sex and the plot sometimes intersect, putting me in the uncomfortable position of having to read smut or not knowiong what is going on (0/10 ).

Well written for the genre (=beloved fanfictions that are rarely redeemable); characters are original and flawed, even interesting sometimes.

The plot is three pubblished books worth of plot available for free on the internet and that is a blessing. I suggest reading this as if all the characters are OCs and you found this book forgotten on the train and decided to read it.

But is it actually good as a story? idk its a lot honestly, if you have to quarantine for 14 days bc of covid and you don’t have anything to study, this will fill at least 4 full days of reading.

(original version)8/10 bc it has everithing but its still not a masterpiece of modern fanfic literature sorry

Unholyverse

Contains Demons, priests, scarfs, exorcisms(affectionate), vergin mary tatoos and much more. Not as carefully written as throam or tas, but it still makes it as one of the good fanfics solely for the cool factor.

It would be so cool if this was better written and a comicbook or a grafic novel with original characters.( I skipped all the sex scenes bc they made me uncomfy, as usual so idkwhat was going on there)

If there was anything extremely upsetting about this one i forgot about it (i checked: they say “ warnings for religious themes, pain, trauma, blood, torture and death”). There is a lot of plot, its not even just one fic its a whole serie.

Great for passing the time, I forgot most of it 7/10 for the demons (original version)

#throam #asotm #milk fic #twist and shout #filthy lucre #unholyverse #uhv #hat fic #lung fic #anatomy of a fall #i did this so no one has to #iconic fic list #none of them is actually good #and all of them are results of the internet's 2015's slash paring of the month obsession #fanfiction

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clonerightsagenda · 3 years ago

Note

for the ask meme- have you done aximili animorphs? i know you're not super into the fandom so you might have to skip some aspects of the prompt, but i really enjoy your thoughts haha <3

First impression

I was taken in by the 'cute little alien fish out of water' trope. Haha, look at Ax eating milk duds off the ground! Wild.

Impression now

All the Animorphs characters acquire depth and trauma like a snowball rolling downhill. I think it’s really interesting that at first you think Ax is going to follow a story like Elfangor tried to - alien from a militaristic culture comes to Earth and learns to appreciate peace and humanity. But no, Ax brings the war with him, he calls Jake prince because this isn’t ‘found family’, it’s a military unit, and he’s broken when the curtains close just like everyone else.

Favorite moment

For humor, every interaction Ax has with food. For oomph.... how Ax looked up to his brother so much, and Elfangor arguably led to the rise of Visser 3 by refusing to space a bunch of helpless yeerks and then tried his best to nope out of the war entirely, and Ax did defy Andalite command but when Jake tells him to space 17,000 essentially prisoners of war he hits the switch.

What would they say to each other, if they could.

Idea for a story

The fact that he immediately fucks off into space and then gets ambiguously vored by an eldritch horror makes this difficult. How about one of those fics that’s formatted as an in-universe text: Aximil’s tell-all guide to Earth for Andalite tourists. That could be funny.

Unpopular opinion

Yeah hard to say what’s popular/unpopular, although out of fan content I’ve seen, it does seem like people tend to play up Ax’s cute weird alien shtick when he can also lean into the cultural superiority and very nearly sells us all out at the end. He’s Nuanced.

Favorite relationship

Tobias. They bond over being outsiders, and I really wish they'd unpacked the whole relatives thing on screen more, although the bit where Ax is teaching Tobias to pretend to be an andalite in morph was touching.

Favorite headcanon

Hmm. I tend to generate more hcs for things I talk about a lot with other people, and Animorphs is.... niche. I’ll cheat and offer something for andalites as a whole: given their Warrior Culture deal and canonical ableism, I suspect andalites are not very supportive when it comes to mental health issues in veterans. Ax probably came home with PTSD, but I doubt anyone wanted to hear about it.

#ask meme #animorphs//

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nitrateglow · 4 years ago

Text

Favorite films discovered in 2020

Well, this year sucked. I did see some good movies though. Some even made after I was born!

Perfect Blue (dir. Satoshi Kon, 1997)

I watch a lot of thrillers and horror movies, but precious few actually unsettle me in any lasting way. This cannot be said of Perfect Blue, which gave me one of the most visceral cinematic experiences of my life. Beyond the brief flashes of bloodletting (you will never look at a screwdriver the same way again), the scariest thing about Perfect Blue might be how the protagonist has both her life and her sense of self threatened by the villains. The movie’s prescience regarding public persona is also incredibly eerie, especially in our age of social media. While anime is seen as a very niche interest (albeit one that has become more mainstream in recent years), I would highly recommend this movie to thriller fans, whether they typically watch anime or not. It’s right up there with the best of Hitchcock or De Palma.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (dir. Sergio Leone, 1966)

Nothing is better than when an iconic movie lives up to the hype. Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef play off of one another perfectly. I was impressed by Wallach as Tuco in particular: his character initially seems like a one-dimensional greedy criminal, but the performance is packed with wonderful moments of humanity. Do I really need to say anything about the direction? Or about the wonderful storyline, which takes on an almost mythic feel in its grandeur? Or that soundtrack?

Die Niebelungen (both movies) (dir. Fritz Lang, 1924)

I did NOT expect to love these movies as much as I did. That they would be dazzlingly gorgeous I never doubted: the medieval world of the story is brought to vivid life through the geometrical mise en scene and detailed costuming. However, the plot itself is so, so riveting, never losing steam over the course of the four hours it takes to watch both movies. The first half is heroic fantasy; the second half involves a revenge plot of almost Shakespearean proportions. This might actually be my favorite silent Fritz Lang movie now.

Muppet Treasure Island (dir. Brian Henson, 1996)

I understand that people have different tastes and all, but how does this movie have such a mixed reception? It’s absolutely hilarious. How could anybody get through the scene with “THA BLACK SPOT AGGHHHHHHH” and not declare this a masterpiece of comedy? And I risk being excommunicated from the Muppet fandom for saying it, but I like this one more than The Great Muppet Caper. It’s probably now my second favorite Muppet movie.

Belle de Jour (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1967)

I confess I’m not terribly fond of “but was it real???” movies. They tend to feel gimmicky more often than not. Belle de Jour is an exception. This is about more than a repressed housewife getting her kicks working as a daytime prostitute. The film delves into victim blaming, trauma, class, and identity-- sure, this sounds academic and dry when I put it that way, but what I’m trying to say is that these are very complicated characters and the blurring of fantasy and reality becomes thought-provoking rather than trite due to that complexity.

Secondhand Lions (dir. Tim McCanlies, 2003)

The term “family movie” is often used as a synonym for “children’s movie.” However, there is an important distinction: children’s movies only appeal to kids, while family movies retain their appeal as one grows up. Secondhand Lions is perhaps a perfect family movie, with a great deal more nuance than one might expect regarding the need for storytelling and its purpose in creating meaning for one’s life. It’s also amazingly cast: Haley Joel Osment is excellent as the juvenile lead, and Michael Caine and Robert Duvall steal the show as Osment’s eccentric uncles.

The Pawnbroker (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1964)

Controversial in its day for depicting frontal nudity, The Pawnbroker shocks today for different reasons. As the top review of the film on IMDB says, we’re used to victims of great atrocities being presented as sympathetic, good people in fiction. Here, Rod Steiger’s Sol Nazerman subverts such a trope: his suffering at the hands of the Nazis has made him a hard, closed-off person, dismissive of his second wife (herself also a survivor of the Holocaust), cold to his friendly assistant, and bitter towards himself. The movie follows Nazerman’s postwar life, vividly presenting his inner pain in a way that is almost too much to bear. Gotta say, Steiger gives one of the best performances I have ever seen in a movie here: he’s so three-dimensional and complex. The emotions on his face are registered with Falconetti-level brilliance.

The Apartment (dir. Billy Wilder, 1960)

While not the most depressing Christmas movie ever, The Apartment certainly puts a good injection of cynicism into the season. I have rarely seen a movie so adept at blending comedy, romance, and satire without feeling tone-deaf. There are a lot of things to praise about The Apartment, but I want to give a special shoutout to the dialogue. “Witty” dialogue that sounds natural is hard to come by-- so often, it just feels smart-assy and strained. Not here.

Anatomy of a Murder (dir. Otto Preminger, 1959)

I’m not big into courtroom dramas, but Anatomy of a Murder is a big exception. Its morally ambiguous characters elevate it from being a mere “whodunit” (or I guess in the case of this movie, “whydunit”), because if there’s something you’re not going to get with this movie, it’s a clear answer as to what happened on the night of the crime. Jimmy Stewart gives one of his least characteristic performances as the cynical lawyer, and is absolutely brilliant.

Oldboy (dir. Park Chan-Wook, 2003)

Oldboy reminded me a great deal of John Webster’s 17th century tragedy The Duchess of Malfi. Both are gruesome, frightening, and heartbreaking works of art, straddling the line between sensationalism and intelligence, proving the two are not mutually exclusive. It’s both entertaining and difficult to watch. The thought of revisiting it terrifies me but I feel there is so much more to appreciate about the sheer craft on display.

Family Plot (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1976)

Family Plot is an enjoyable comedy; you guys are just mean. I know in an ideal world, Hitchcock’s swan song would be a great thriller masterpiece in the vein of Vertigo or Psycho. Family Plot is instead a silly send-up of Hitchcock’s favorite tropes, lampooning everything from the dangerous blonde archetype (with not one but two characters) to complicated MacGuffin plots. You’ll probably demand my film buff card be revoked for my opinion, but to hell with it-- this is my favorite of Hitchcock’s post-Psycho movies.

My Best Girl (dir. Sam Taylor, 1927)

Mary Pickford’s farewell to silent film also happens to be among her best movies. It’s a simple, charming romantic comedy starring her future husband, Charles “Buddy” Rogers. Pickford also gets to play an adult character here, rather than the little girl parts her public demanded she essay even well into her thirties. She and Rogers are sweet together without being diabetes-inducing, and the comedy is often laugh out loud funny. It even mocks a few tropes that anyone who watches enough old movies will recognize and probably dislike-- such as “break his heart to save him!!” (my personal most loathed 1920s/1930s trope).

Parasite (dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2019)

This feels like such a zeitgeist movie. It’s about the gap between the rich and the poor, it’s ironic, it’s depressing, it’s unpredictable as hell. I don’t like terms like “modern classic,” because by its very definition, a classic can only be deemed as such after a long passage of time, but I have a good feeling Parasite will be considered one of the definitive films of the 2010s in the years to come.

Indiscreet (dir. Stanley Donen, 1958)

Indiscreet often gets criticized for not being Notorious more or less, which is a shame. It’s not SUPPOSED to be-- it’s cinematic souffle and both Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant elevate that light material with their perfect chemistry and comedic timing. It’s also refreshing to see a rom-com with characters over 40 as the leads-- and the movie does not try to make them seem younger or less mature, making the zany moments all the more hilarious. It’s worth seeing for Cary Grant’s jig (picture above) alone.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1974)

This movie embodies so much of what I love about 70s cinema: it’s gritty, irreverent, and hard-hitting. It’s both hilarious and suspenseful-- I was tense all throughout the run time. I heard there was a remake and it just seems... so, so pointless when you already have this gem perfect as it is.

They All Laughed (dir. Peter Bogdonavich, 1981)

Bogdonavich’s lesser known homage to 1930s screwball comedy is also a weirdly autumnal movie. Among the last gasps of the New Hollywood movement, it is also marks the final time Audrey Hepburn would star in a theatrical release. The gentle comedy, excellent ensemble cast (John Ritter is the standout), and the mature but short-lived romance between Hepburn and Ben Gazarra’s characters make this a memorably bittersweet gem.

The Palm Beach Story (dir. Preston Sturges, 1942)

Absolutely hilarious. I was watching this with my parents in the room. My mom tends to like old movies while my dad doesn’t, but both of them were laughing aloud at this one. Not much else to say about it, other than I love Joel McCrea the more movies I see him in-- though it’s weird seeing him in comedies since I’m so used to him as a back-breaking man on the edge in The Most Dangerous Game!

Nothing Sacred (dir. William Wellman, 1937)

I tend to associate William Wellman with the pre-code era, so I’ve tried delving more into his post-code work. Nothing Sacred is easily my favorite of those films thus far, mainly for Carole Lombard but also because the story still feels pretty fresh due to the jabs it takes at celebrity worship and moral hypocrisy. For a satire, it’s still very warm towards its characters, even when they’re misbehaving or deluding themselves, so it’s oddly a feel-good film too.

Applause (dir. Rouben Mamoulian, 1929)

I love watching early sound movies, but my inner history nerd tends to enjoy them more than the part of me that, well, craves good, well-made movies. Most early sound films are pure awkward, but there’s always an exception and Applause is one of them. While the plot’s backstage melodrama is nothing special, the way the story is told is super sophisticated and expressive for this period of cinema history, and Helen Morgan makes the figure of the discarded burlesque queen seem truly human and tragic rather than merely sentimental.

Topaz (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1969)

Another late Hitchcock everyone but me seems to hate. After suffering through Torn Curtain, I expected Hitchcock’s other cold war thriller was going to be dull as dishwater, but instead I found an understated espionage movie standing in stark contrast to the more popular spy movies of the period. It’ll never be top Hitchcock, of course-- still it was stylish and enjoyable, with some truly haunting moments. I think it deserves more appreciation than it’s been given.

What were your favorite cinematic discoveries in 2020?

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akvtsuki-ari · 5 years ago

Text

Sweetheart (Ch.1)

Warnings: Mentions of BDSM and bunch of other kinks but nothing sexual in this chapter lol. Sub!Spencer and Femdom!Reader

Length: 5.3k

Authors Note: this is hands down the most self-indulgent shit ive ever wrote but do i care? the answer is no dsjk but this that series i had planned where the reader introduces spencer to proper BDSM and all that. hoping to make this fic kinda informative also lol. also im uploading this fic on ao3 as well. also no tags for this fic bc its really specific and ill probably be writing for it for a while! sorry about that

Plot Summary: Spencer Reid just wanted to be.., well, you know. He doesn’t expect to find much when he signs up for a BDSM dating website but somehow he manages you and he couldn’t be more delighted

Spencer Reid was certainly a lot of things. He was a lover of the arts, someone who had a particular affinity for 15th-century literature, a magician at best, a theater nerd at worst, and a teacher when life called for it. He loves the world even when it's really dark and he loves sleeping in even more. He loves his friends and they love him too - even when they pretend that his random facts annoy them. Spencer Reid was a friend, an FBI agent, a genius with an IQ of 187, and a son to a mother he loves wholly. He was a lot of things and for the most part - he knew a lot about what he really loved to do. He supposed that it's been like that his whole life.

It's not everyday that he discovers something new about himself. About everything else? Always. He loves to learn, but about himself? There's never all that much on the frontier.

It's hard to say, because of that, when Spencer discovered he was a sub. It's difficult to pinpoint a specific time and place, or even how the pieces got put together. He just remembers how it felt when it hit him, like a freight train going 100 miles an hour into a concrete wall. Or a plane crashing onto an island. Or like a fly hitting the glass panes of a delivery truck. He remembers the feeling when he was deftly reminded of this fact. Spencer Reid was a sub - through and through and he wasn't really sure what to make of it.

Surprisingly to most of his direct peers, Spencer wasn't a virgin. He'd had sex with 2 people who he'd been kinda friends with at some point, but it always got a little weird after that. The second time though, the girl ended up choking him a little bit when she got off and Spencer thought he had died. Not in a bad way, more in a "I'm so turned on by this I feel like I've genuinely gone to heaven," sort of way. He didn't think it was possible for a sexual encounter to make him feel like that but it did. It didn't stop after that either, which was the most agitating part.

Spencer doesn't consider himself a sexual person. Sex is about intimacy and companionship, and hopefully love when he finds that someday. Sex isn't necessarily about pleasure but that wasn't an easy lesson to learn.

Spencer just wanted to understand - so like any great genius he participated in thought experiments. It's normally a female superhero/supervillain that crosses his mind (he has an affinity for Poison Ivy), and he just kinda imagines what it would be like if they did what she did. The choking turned him on, but it wasn't enough. Through that, he figures out that he had more than a choking kink and that he was more than a little interested in a partner having complete access to him. He thought about it for weeks and the getting off was working for him but he couldn't get the fantasy out of his head. He wanted more - he wanted someone to fulfill his wishes.

It was too much for him to ignore. Those months of being able to hold off through masturbating are over and he's just sorta itching. Aching to act on those impulses with another person who can give him what he needs, and he doesn't want it to be transactional. Maybe it's too ideal to want a partner out of such an endeavor but was it so wrong? To want real affection and romance from someone who could also overpower him wasn't a crime and he'd be damned if he pretended to want any less. Spencer was just searching, even if it was rather desperately.

So, when Spencer finds himself on a BDSM dating site and he feels like his life is in shambles, he can only blame himself. It's not something he'd normally do but he's getting a little more than relentless about it but he also just wants to see what's out there. He's so out of it was it happens, it felt like he was being possessed as he made a fake email and wrote out his account information. Definitely blaming it on possession, he thinks.

It's too late to go back, as he scrolls through tons of profiles of rather intense looking people. He's not surprised, this is where people go to express themselves. They're entitled to that, it just sucks since he's just not ready for such levels of intensity. He wonders if he's in too deep yet, but he figures he'd hit that mark a long time ago and keeps scrolling through profiles. There wasn't much to go off of, many people not choosing to use photos for the sake of anonymity, which was good for Spencer. He clicks onto his own profile, reading his own bio carefully.

USERNAME: DOC187

SUB/ SWITCH / DOM

M / F / O

FETISHES: N/A

BIO: Interest in a dominant female companion. Completely inexperienced.

Spencer feels ridiculous, but he doubts anyone would even message him. He doesn't have much on his profile and he keeps things short for that purpose. He wanted to stay as low to the ground as possible - more curious to explore what was going in the world than to find anything legitimate. He scrolls through hundreds of profiles, mostly of people who were BDSM vets looking for new connections or fun. Some people catch his eye but they don't match his interests so he doesn't bother.

Except, one profile. The bio was beyond interesting to Spencer.

USERNAME: MISS—LILAC

SUB / SWITCH / DOM

M / F / O

FETISHES: Sadomasochist, Degradation, Humiliation, Pegging, Overstimulation, Edging, Crossdressing, Exhibitionism, Mutual Masturbation, Dacryphilia, Shibari/Gags/Bondage, Wax Play, Impact Play, Breath Play, General Sensation Play, Discipline, Collaring, Begging. Willing to try most things.

BIO: Interested in submissive males of any experience level. Helps if you're interesting and like to read and watch indie films. Looking for genuine connection and plenty of good banter. Curly hair is nice too. lol.

Before Spencer can think about it for too long his mouse clicks over that stupid little message button next to your profile. Spencer shakes his head at his own existence as he types you a message. Says you're online right now, but Spencer's sure he won't get a response for a while.

DOC187: Seems I fit who you're interested in. I even have the curly hair.

Spencer chews on his nails anxiously before he sighs at himself. He has no clue what's gotten into him belle before he can think he sees your 3-dotted bubble pop up. He feels his body wracked with nerves.

MISS—LILAC: I'm guessing you like to read and watch indie films too?

Spencer smiles. You seem interesting and the fact that the two of you were just talking normal was making Spencer happy.

DOC187: Indeed. I'm a sucker for 15-century literature and anything in Russian and foreign language. You?

MISS—LILAC: 15th century huh? I'll assume Chaucer. And Russian? You're interesting, doc. I'm more modern and English, hope you're not deterred.

Spencer smiles, surprised that you recognize an author as niche as Chaucer. He shakes his head at your commentary. He almost forgets that both of you are on a BDSM dating site and the irony doesn't escape him.

DOC187: Deterred? Never. I think you're rather interesting too, Miss Lilac.

MISS—LILAC: Ever the gentleman doc. I'm hoping you won't run away if I ask you more personal questions.

Spencer swallows. He types back quickly.

DOC187: What kinds of questions?

MISS—LILAC: If it's okay, you're real name and what you do. My names Y/N, and I'm a florist. I live in DC and I love romance novels.

Spencer smiles. He appreciates you laying down the path for him, knowing the stakes.

DOC187: My names Spencer and I work for the FBI. I also live in DC, and I love magic.

MISS—LILAC: Magic? I'd love for you to show me sometime.

Spencer swallows. Part of him feels like it's a stupid idea to ask you out so early but if you asked, he'd likely say yes. He decides to wait it out.

DOC187: I'd be more than happy to show you.

MISS—LILAC: I suppose you could send me a video but that's not the same as seeing the magic in real life, now is it?

Spencer is smiling like an idiot at this point. He shakes his head a little, jittery.

DOC187: Infinitely better live, I would say.

MISS—LILAC: Seems like I've found an excuse to ask you on a date then. Saturday's work for me but I'm sure it depends on you, FBI man. Before that, I'm gonna drop my number and I'll be expecting your call. (XXX-XXX-XXXX)

Spencer giggles. It's a little out of range for things he's used to doing, giggling aloud for someone else is certainly new. Spencer picks up his phone and dials away, anxious to call you but excited nonetheless. He heard you pick up the phone and his heart catches in his throat.

"Hello?," Your voice is smooth, and a little bit lower than he was expecting. It sounds pretty.

"Hello, Y/N," Spencer says back. He heard you laugh on the other side and can't help the way his heart flutters.

"Lovely to talk to you doc,"

"Still Doc? Not Spencer?" Spencer questions. You smile on the other side of the line.

"Doc seems to fit you. But, for the sake of formality, hello Spencer,"

"I like Doc too, but it feels like I should have a nickname for you as well. Only seems fair," Spencer says laughing quietly.

"If it's your prerogative you can call me Miss Lilac, or just Miss but..." you trail off for a minute. Spencer squints.

"Miss is a title, you know? Doesn't seem fair for you to call me that when I haven't earned it from you yet. I'm sure we'll get there but for now you can just call me Y/N," you say softly. Spencer blushes bright red, his voice betraying him as he speaks.

"O-Oh, well um - where does the name Lilac come from? Normally people go with their names when it comes to stuff like that," Spencer says shyly. He heard you laugh on the other side of the phone and blushes again, grateful you can't see him.

"I love the language of flowers and flowers themselves. It's a way to speak that not many people know - but I like the meaning and look of lilacs. White lilacs represent purity, so that was a bit of irony, but light purple lilacs mean first love," you say carefully.

"First love?," Spencer asks. You bite your lip for a moment.

"I joke that BDSM is my first love since it's such a big part of my life. Not as big as some but not small for certain. It gave me much needed confidence so I joke that it was my first," You say lightly. You hear Spencer giggle on the other side and you smile.

"What about your username? Any significance to DOC187 that I should know of?," you readjust your seat on your couch as you talk. Spencer grows a bit embarrassed.

"I normally introduce myself as Doctor Spencer Reid for work, not a medical doctor but I have three PhD's," Spencer admits. You raise your brows but hear the hesitation in his voice.

"Very, very impressive doc. What about the 187? It could be a plain ol' number but my guess would be otherwise,"

"That's my IQ, actually. I don't think intelligence can be boiled down and quantified like that but I couldn't think of anything else," Spencer explains.

"So you're a certified genius with 3 PhD's? To say I'm impressed is an understatement. Anything else impressive you'd like to tell me before I totally pick your brains," you say a little shocked.

"You wanna pick my brains?," Spencer asks. You wanna laugh at the irony of such a silly question from such an intelligent man but you refrain.

"Who wouldn't?," you say incredulously. Spencer smiles shyly.

"The only other thing is that I can read 20,000 words per minute," Spencer says trying to deflect. Your jaw dropped before but it manages to unhinge a little further.

"There's a lot to get to know about you Doctor Reid,"

"I'm sure it's the same for you," Spencer replies.

"Guess we'll have to find out won't we?," you say smiling.

Damn, Spencer got lucky. Hopefully he'd get to find out soon

_____

"Reid, are you listening?," Derek's voice snaps Spencer out of his entranced state. His smiling expression snaps up to look at Derek who looks a little exasperated.

"Sorry, what was that?," Spencer asks back. Derek puts down the case file they were working on. They had just finished a case and needed to complete some paperwork before submitting it for review and to be used in court. The job was given to him and Morgan and Spencer was evidently distracted.

"Alright, kid - what is up with you? All case you've been checking your phone non-stop and spacing out, all smiles and giggles. C'mon now kid, seriously. You got a little lady at home waiting for you or is there something else I don't know about?," Derek interrogates. Spencer doesn't really know what to make of it, though it's not really in his interest to hide you, it hasn't really come up with anyone on the team yet so it was proving difficult to decide what to do. The smile on his face manages to appear again as he starts to think about you, the tips of his ears red.

"Reid," Morgan says again, with a small look of irritation.

"Her names Y/N," Spencer blurts out faster than he can't think. Derek gives him a huge grin, holding his hand out to dap Spencer up. Spencer just looks at it confused for a second before getting the memo.

"'My man," Derek says chuckling. Before Spencer can continue Prentiss, JJ, and Garcia walk in. Hotch is the only one missing, and Spencer's a little grateful.

"What are we celebrating in here you guys?," Prentiss asks first. Spencer goes to say something to move away from his sudden confession but Derek is quick to cut him off.

"Our boy genius over here got him a little lady," Derek announces. The whole team erupts in questions and Spencer wants to bury himself.

"Congratulations, Spencer!! How long have you two been dating?," Prentiss asks.

"You guys are so dramatic. It's only been two months but no first date because well..." Spencer trails off. JJ just nods her head.

"Duty calls, I'm guessing" JJ finishes. Spencer nods deflated hearing Emily draw a breath between her teeth.

"That's tough, Spence,"

Just as Spencer goes to give a response back he gets a text from you that makes his day a little better. It's a selfie of you at work, a picture your employee must've taken of you in a room full of new flower deliveries. You're giving Spencer a toothy grin as you hold a bunch of gardenias in your hand.

Y/N 🌸: *image attachment*

Gardenias// You're lovely + Secret Love <33

Spencer cannot control the way his whole face bunches up in a smile, as if there's no one else in the room with him. Everyone just looks at him surprised, Garcia giving him a side-eye.

"How can you guys trust this stranger? We don't even know who she is! I haven't even run any background checks on her," Garcia complains. Prentiss nudges her side.

"I don't know if it matters - look at how hard he's smiling over there," Prentiss says. Garcia reluctantly looks and can't help but sigh.

"Okay well he seems really happy but still! We don't even know her," she pouts.

"I'm sure we'll meet her soon," JJ snickers at Spencer's lovestruck expression. Derek leans over Spencer's shoulder and raises his brows.

"Is that her, kid?," Derek asks. Spencer nods, simply staring at the picture you sent. Derek whistles when he sees you - you're genuinely stunning and he's surprised to say the least.

"Hot mama, pretty boy - how'd you manage that?," Derek asks, dumbfounded. Emily rolls her eyes.

"C'mon Derek, I'm sure - oh wow," Emily leans over Spencer's shoulder to see you and is met with the same reaction. JJ and Garcia are quick to follow thereafter, both looking equally as surprised.

"She's..." JJ trails off. The rest of the team just nods as Spencer grins ear to ear.

Spencer 🐻: Beautiful, as always.

Spencer ignores the rest of the team as they look at each other in disbelief.

Y/N🌸: Me or the flowers, Doc?

Spencer🐻: Both, but mostly you.

"Wow, Spencer you're really -" Prentiss starts

"You're whipped, kid. I mean seriously whipped," Derek finishes, nodding in agreement. JJ can't help but smile, giving Spencer a small pat on the back.

"She seems lovely, Spencer. How'd you two meet?," JJ says. Garcia stands around looking rather suspicious. A blush creeps onto Spencer's neck as he's reminded of how you two met.

"Online," Spencer says shortly. No one decides to question it, and Spencer thanks every god he can think of.

"Have you two FaceTimed yet? How can we know she's not, I don't know - catfishing you? Or scamming you in some other cyber criminal way?," Garcia sounds distressed. Spencer gives a small smile.

"We fall asleep over FaceTime every night," Spencer admits. Penelope's expression falls, and Prentiss gives a smile.

"That is disgustingly cute," JJ says laughing.

"Okay, well - I'm still running a background check on her," Garcia says stubbornly "But, I'm happy for you,"

"Thanks Garcia," Spencer mumbles out as he texts you again.

Y/N🌸: I wanna see you, love

Spencer blushes red as he reads your message. The word love makes his whole face hot.

Spencer🐻: I can't take a selfie for my life

Y/N🌸: You're with your team aren't you? Get them to take a picture of you.

Spencer wants to fold away, not ever really being the picture type, but how could he ever deny you.

Spencer🐻: How could I ever say no to you?

"Hey guys, can one of you take a picture of me for Y/N?" Spencer asks embarrassingly red. The whole team sends him a look of surprise.

"I'll take it Spence, try not to look as uncomfortable as you do right now," JJ says. The whole team refrains from laughing as Spencer gives an awkward smile. He thanks JJ who hands him back his phone before texting you again.

Spencer🐻: *image attachment* You owe me one

Y/N🌸: you're stunning as always. hadn't seen you in so long I almost forgot what you looked like.

Spencer🐻: stunnings an interesting choice of words.

Y/N🌸: I said what I said, doc.

Spencer can't help but do a little giggle, that causes the whole team to give him a look. Morgan just shakes his head, shrugging. Emily, JJ, and Garcia just look at each other before the room draws into a subtle but comfortable silence as Spencer just smiles, totally unaware of how whipped he happened to look. He didn’t seem to mind either way.

___

"How was work?," Spencer asks over the phone, kicking his shoes off as he looks into his fridge for something to eat. He hears you sigh on the other side of the line.

"Busy today - wedding season is coming up so tons of calls for centerpiece designs and costs. It's going well though, business couldn't be better," you say, clearly tired yet content. Spencer gives a small smile and feels relieved that things are going okay for you.

"That's really good. I'm glad you're feeling alright," Spencer replies. You ease into the couch as you talk to Spencer, relaxing by the second.

"What about you, FBI man? You have an okay day?," Your voice is full of a gentle concern that Spencer appreciates.

"Yeah, just paperwork and JJ said that we shouldn't have any upcoming cases this week to be worried about so I have the weekend off," Spencer says without thought.

"Have any special plans for the weekend?," you say cheekily. Spencer, still not having caught on, shakes his head for a second.

"No, why?,"

"Hm... well - would you like to go on a date with me then Doctor Reid?," You ask, giggling. Spencer's eyes widen in realization as he facepalms for a moment.

"Wow, I didn't even think... yes - yes I would love to go on a date with you Y/N," Spencer says laughing at his own misfortune. You shake your head instinctively, but the growing smile and even further growing adoration makes it hard to sit still.

"Hey, Spencer," you say, butterflies filling your stomach.

"Yeah?"

"I really like you,"

____

Saturday comes quicker than Spencer can really understand. You told him not to worry about what the days plans would be but he can't help it. Anxiously awaiting you in front of the cafe that the two of you were supposed to meet at, in a part of town Spencer hasn't really seen before. You said that you'd lead the way and the irony isn't lost on him.

"Spencer?," Your voice is small, as you call out to what you think is Spencer Reid. Of course, you'd seen him before but to see him in person like this was still so unfamiliar. His head shoots up, eyes searching for you. He's delighted to have found you, certainly that was true as he walks towards you. Your arms envelop him in a friendly hug and he can't help but find himself sinking into. You smelled sweet, like fruit and flowers (which makes sense, the more he thinks about it)

"Lovely to finally meet you, Y/N,"

"Same goes for you, doc. Would you like to be informed of our plans for the day, or do you prefer the element of surprise?," You ask smiling. Spencer laughs at your question.

"Details would be appreciated, but I get the feeling you're not gonna give me those."

"You're right! It's a trick question, since it's a surprise. But, promise it'll be good,"

"I'll take your word for it then," Spencer says with a small smile. You hold your hand out for Spencer which he accepts, locking his hands with yours. The affection makes him feel full of warmth, as you lead him away for the day you had planned for the both of you.

___

Spencer underestimated how well you knew him. He really, really did. It's hard to explain since Spencers been on a date before but this was so profoundly different. He's a little touched, but beyond that he's just.. surprised? Every date he'd been on before this, he'd have to play the gentleman but it never seemed like the other person was interested in just him. It was always casual small-talk over dinner, or a mid-day coffee date or something else that just felt mundane but this was beyond Spencer's imagination.

The first place you took him was a bookstore - which was in Spencers mind already a winner for best date he'd ever been on. You walked inside with him and told him he had to pick up a book for you and you had to pick up a book for him and to say his heart absolutely fluttered would be an understatement. He picked up up a copy of "The Screwtape Tales," by C.S. Lewis for you, and you gave him a copy of Shel Silverstein's "Where The Sidewalk Ends." For you, you got a glimpse to see what Spencer's sense of humor was and you gave Spencer a piece of your childhood. Both equal but opposite forms of intimacy. The only thing was Spencer had to wait to read his book because it's relatively shorter than yours and he reads 20,000 words per minute.

The next place you took Spencer was an indoor butterfly garden. Does he have to explain why that's a good date? He heard you talk about all the scientific names for the different flowers and why they attract butterflies and he wasn't sure he could crush any harder on you if he tried. A particular moment sticks out to him on which a butterfly landed on your shoulders and just stayed there like it didn't want to leave. Spencer's eyes were fixated on it the whole time - and he had never wanted to be a butterfly in his life before but he figures there's a first time for everything.

The last place, where the both of you were at now was just a small coffee shop, locally owned and supported by the community here. You told Spencer that when you started up your shop, you'd come in here to work on big orders before you'd expanded enough to have employees. Spencer admires your work ethic, much more than he could ever anticipate as he sits down at a small booth, totally covering the both of you as you return to the table with a little plate of banana bread and two iced coffees. Spencer pouts as he looks up at you, watching you flash him a grin.

"I could've helped you carry this over," Spencer complains gently. You roll your eyes.

"Maybe next time doc," you say softly. You hold back your commentary often on the date, and Spencer pretends not to notice for your sake but he'd be lying if he said he didn't wanna know. You always had something sly to say but you'd kept it from him so many times now he figures it's better if he didn't ask.

Spencer looks at you as you push a plate of banana bread towards him. He looks at you with curious eyes before reading your clearly excited face and laughs. He picks up a piece and examines it, before taking a bite. If it tasted as good as it smelled then he would be more than obliged.

The involuntary moan that escapes Spencer's throat makes you choke with laughter. Shit, you weren't kidding when you said this was the best banana bread in the city. Spencer just looks up at you like he's about to cry with joy as you double over in giggles.

"I know," You say softly, taking a bite yourself eyes filling with joy "I ordered some more for us to take home - you're welcome," you say with confidence. Spencer smiles because that is genuinely thoughtful, but it was more endearing to see you pretend it wasn't. He just shakes his head, a blush arising to his face as he looks at you. You're staring at him with intent. He quirks his brow at you in question.

"I had a good time today, Spencer" You say warmly. You only called him Spencer when you were saying something affectionate and a bit serious. He gives you a toothy smile.

"I haven't been on very many dates, but this was easily the best one I'd ever been on," Spencer says honestly. You grin ear to ear, hands carefully holding Spencer across the table, running your thumb over his knuckles for a few seconds. You couldn't say for sure whether it was too soon to ask him to be your boyfriend, but you'd be damned if you said it didn't cross your mind.

Spencer was mind-numbingly unaware of what good boyfriend material he was, but beyond that - what good submissive boyfriend material he was. It was driving you nuts, but you knew this was all new for him and you didn't wanna freak him out. Even when guys say they're interested in being submissive, they're still often times uncomfortable with you being fully dominant. Dominant in public and in bed, if you will. You wanted to pay for dates, and buy him flowers, and make him feel special too - at least on the occasion. That role came naturally to you, that let me make you feel owned type affection that only a dominant person can give. It scared men off - out of relationships, and you totally got why - but you liked Spencer too much as a person to risk iit.

Spencer holds your hands together, gathering your attention. You looked at him spaced out and he gives you a look of concern.

"You okay?," Spencer asks. You nod, chewing your lip in debate of whether or not you should express your concerns. Spencer just tugs on your hand and looks at you intently.

You sigh, looking at Spencer softly.

"I'm okay I just really like you," you say a little exasperated. Spencer laughs but is filled with relief.

"I'm glad to hear that. What else is on your mind?,"

"I really like you - like in an, I want you to officially by my boyfriend way and I hope it's not too soon but I'm just, worried I guess," you say nervously. Spencer can't help the way his heart beats in his chest when he hears you say boyfriend. God did he want to be your boyfriend.

"What're you worried about?,"

"I'm worried about freaking you out. I can be a lot since I'm... you know?," You say nervously. Spencer looks at you to continue.

"I'm more than just dominant in bed, and for a lot of guys it's not their thing and that's their right but I like you so much. I really don't want that to happen if I ask you out now and you realize that it's not for you," you say in clear upset.

Spencer looks at you in disbelief. You were worried that he was gonna freak out over that? That you were too dominant for him? It feels like such a silly concern but the expression on your face tells him you're speaking from experience.

"I mean, it's all kinda new to me but, well - I do like how you treat me? It's a nice change, I can't imagine myself getting tired of it, or of you. I really like you too," Spencer tried his best to reassure you without totally embarrassing you. You smiles at Spencer but your face is still full of doubt.

"If that ever changes, I'll tell you but I'd really like to call you my girlfriend," Spencer finishes. You can't help the warmth that spreads in your stomach at the offer. You just nod, looking up at him. You stand and walk to Spencer's side of the booth, sliding in next to him, leaning your head into his shoulder for a few while seconds. You sit back up, and Spencer turns to you.

"Hey, doc," you say softly. Spencer hums in acknowledgement.

"Can I kiss you?," you ask softly. Spencer chews his lip and nods, looking down at your lip. You're wearing lipgloss and it makes them look pretty - you are so pretty to Spencer.

Kisses are their own language, Spencer figures. The way someone kisses you can tell you a lot about who they are - so, when you put your hands on the side of Spencer's face, pulling him closer to you with such care and adoration - Spencer can feel what you were referencing earlier. The word Miss rings out in his mind, the way you pay attention to him with your hands. He feels your lips press against his, slowly gliding your fingers in his hair, thumb brushing agains the side of his cheek. Your other hand rested on his inner thigh and he has to think about anything other than that not to get hard. Spencer didn't get how much he'd been thinking about touching you until you'd do with no hesitation and he lets out a small whine. You pull back and Spencer has to catch his breath.

His lashes blink up at you and you're absolutely beaming.

"You're cute baby,"

Baby? Spencer wants to cover his face when you say it. You kiss him again and he can't help but feel flush.

You were Spencer's girlfriend and then some and he couldn't be more happy.

#spencer reid #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid smut #spencer reid angst #spencer reid oneshot #spencer x y/n #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #Criminal Minds #criminal minds smut #criminal minds fluff #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds x y/n #sub!spencer #sub!spencer reid #so nervous abt uploading this lol

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humanmoodring-retired · 4 years ago

Text

Good Vibrations & Coffee Contemplations || Raina & Nadia

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @rainaim & @humanmoodring SUMMARY: Nadia grabs a coffee. Raina makes a friend. CONTENT: brief parental death mention

Raina leaned against the counter top, bored by the lack of customers. The morning rush had come and gone. Now, only a few coffee connoisseurs trickled in every twenty to forty minutes. Her shift wasn’t going to be over for another hour and a half, and though she knew there was plenty that she could do to pass the time, it was hard to find the encouragement, especially when the overhead speakers had died out and there was nobody with the know-how to fix them. She scrolled through her phone, only looking up at a sudden shadow against the door. A customer! Raina shot up and beamed at the woman as she entered the shop. “Hi! Welcome to Coffee Plus.” She punched in her I.D and waited for the woman to begin her order, finally glad to have something to do that wasn’t scrubbing the burnt muffin tins in the back.

Sometimes, Nadia preferred to just stay in her apartment. Most times, really, if she was being honest. And she was trying to do that more often. But she stayed inside too much, and the days were getting longer, and warmer, and generally more enjoyable. And she liked being warm, and she was thinking too much in her apartment. And… she’d run out of coffee, which meant she needed to go somewhere to get a much needed dose of caffeine. Which was how she ended up at Coffee Plus, hoping that the barista wasn’t that poor girl that she and Sammy had ended up tormenting. It wasn’t, thankfully, just a young woman who went from bored to very, very excited so fast it was like emotional whiplash. Nadia blinked. “Uh, yeah. Can I--” she acted like she was deciding what she wanted when really she already knew. “Can I get a triple shot of espresso.” She needed to not fall asleep for a few more hours, at least. “And, uh, a blueberry muffin.” She guessed that maybe she should probably eat something, too.

As the woman approached the counter, Raina looked past her to see if anybody had followed. Nope, she was alone. Disappointment fell over her for a brief movement before she reapplied the smile and gave her attention back to the woman. She had been hopeful that there’d be more customers to help-- that the remainder of her shift would be spent using up her time, not slugging through wiping down each table until her replacement came in to relieve her. Raina nodded enthusiastically as the woman finally ordered. A triple espresso? That was easy. “Sure thing. Can I get a name--” She looked around. “Never mind. Why don’t you go on and find yourself a seat and I’ll bring it over to you when it’s ready.” She kept her smile as she turned back towards the espresso machine. Raina waited for the filter to drip the espresso into the glass below, humming as she went. She quickly warmed up the muffin and put it on a small, off-white plate. Once the woman’s order was ready, she walked it slowly to the table. “Here you are, hon!” She didn’t know if the woman was older or younger than her, but it didn’t matter-- Southern charm leaked from her candy coated tongue.

There wasn’t really anyone else to focus on as Nadia felt the barista cycle through disappointment and hope and just overwhelming enthusiasm at doing her job. “Uh, yeah, thanks.” Nadia managed a tired smile and went over to a table. She checked her phone for a bit, answering a few text messages and looking over a journal article werewolves in medieval Icelandic literature, which was pretty niche reading, even for her, but some website that she’d been on a few weeks ago kept sending her emails with journal articles attached, and she… kept reading them. She didn’t know how accurate they were, and she doubted that Kaden would give her anything more about werewolves beside the fact that most of them were monsters, but it was still an interesting read, even if the words were a little blurry. She looked up when her coffee was brought to her, her smile lopsided. The younger woman was kind and sincere, and Nadia appreciated it, even if it was a lot. She couldn’t help but return the kindness. “I appreciate you bringing it to me. Really, I could have grabbed it myself.”

“Oh, it’s no problem.” Raina looked down at the table, realizing she had forgotten a napkin. She held up a finger and returned to the small table next to the door and grabbed a few before she returned to the customer. She placed them down neatly next to the plate and smiled. “Ain’t got much goin’ on anyhow, so I figured I’d up my customer service game.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s too much, isn’t it?” She looked over her shoulder at the clock. Barely a blink had gone by. She frowned slightly. Well, the least she could do was start wiping down the tables so that her replacement didn’t have to. “I’m new here,” Raina said aloud as she grabbed a wet dish rag and disinfecting spray. She moved to a table far, but not too far from the customer. “Just moved here… a couple weeks ago?” She nodded as if in approval of herself. “You from around here?” It was small talk-- not something everyone liked, but Raina was desperate.

It was weird to be treated like it was a sit-down restaurant when it was a coffee shop, Nadia thought, but she didn’t mind. “Well, still. It’s kind of you.” She took a sip of her drink, careful not to gulp it down even though she wanted to. It was hot and bitter, and it didn’t do much to wake her up, but it was the thought of it that counted. “Oh, no, dude. Not a lot at all. It’s really nice, actually.” And it was. The other woman was well-intentioned. Nadia didn’t have to be an empath to tell that. “Yeah,” she asked. She could kind of tell the barista was new, but she didn’t want to point that out. Southern charm wasn’t exactly common in Maine, though. Not with an accent that thick, at least. “How do you like it so far?” She took another sip of her coffee, picked at her muffin. “No, no, I’m from Arizona. I moved here, like, a year and a half ago.” Had it really been that long? It didn’t feel like it had been that long. Then again, it wasn’t like she’d been present the entire time. Nadia suddenly wasn’t that hungry, but she picked at the muffin some more, anyway.

Raina began to wipe down the table and looked over at the woman as she drank her coffee. She watched her expression carefully to see if the coffee was too bitter, too hot, or too cold. It seemed just right by the looks on her face, or lack thereof. She looked back down at the table and decided she was done with her current project and moved onto the next. “It’s good. People keep to ‘emselves mostly, which I don’t mind…” She shrugged. “Everyone’s different, but I do like sayin’ goodmornin, you know?” Raina offered a small smile, “But overall s’great. I’ve got a nice roommate.” Onto the next table. “Arizona?” She hummed, “I’ve never been out West, but I imagine it’s a lot warmer than out here, or even Tennessee.” She scrubbed at a stubborn coffee ring on the table. “So how’re you likin’ it? Any tips for a newbie?” Raina asked, looking up from the now spotless table to look at the customer.

Nadia did her best not to gulp down the bitter liquid as it cooled, eager for something to start taking effect. Maybe it just wouldn’t. Maybe she’d be waiting on the caffeine to kick in for the rest of her life; she’d exhausted it’s usefulness, and now she was to be perpetually tired for forever. Whatever. It was fine. At the very least, chatting with the friendly barista wasn’t at risk of putting her to sleep. “Yeah, totally. I get the wanting a good morning and everything. I’m sure people will start talking more as you get settled. It’s a small town. You’d be surprised how much everybody just… knows everybody.” And they did. It seemed like there was never more than two degrees of separation between her and just about everyone that she met in White Crest. She laughed. “Yeah, it’s pretty fucking hot out there. Desert and all, you know? Phoenix isn’t named after a fire bird because it’s temperatures are balmy.” She kept a more lighthearted disposition, adjusting in her seat more comfortably. “You from Tennessee? Uh, I like it well enough. It’s... I like it a lot better than I thought I would.” She’d stuck around, hadn’t she? She had people here, now. And it wasn’t like she could go home. “Tips… tips… Let me think… Don’t fuck with the mimes.”

“I’ve heard lots about small towns,” Raina said as she wiped her brow with the back of her free hand. She continued to scrub at another coffee ring on a different table, this one more stubborn than the last. “Guess I’ll just have to put on my best manners ‘an show everyone that I mean well.” She knew that newcomers could scare others off. That was the last thing she wanted to do. How was she supposed to find other people like her if she ran them off instead before she could even have the discussion? “Ah, right, right.” Raina nodded. “I heard the road melts. The houses, too?” She wasn’t sure if that was true, but she thought she’d seen it on the news. It was hard to tell what was a meme and what was real nowadays. “Sure am. Born and raised in Knoxville. Big enough place that not everyone is in your business, but small enough to meet someone’s family member twice removed on a trip to the grocery store.” Not that she ever had that problem. Her family wasn’t from Knoxville. A pang of homesickness hit her and she took a deep breath before moving onto the next table. “Mimes?” She laughed. She’d seen the warnings online, but wasn’t sure what to do with them. “Tell me, they hurt people with their fake boxes and goin’ downstairs routines?”

“I believe in you,” Nadia said, and she did. The woman in front of her seemed endlessly pleasant and kind. Nadia could feel it. She laughed. She felt lighter. It was easier to eat some of the muffin, the food not sticking in her throat as bad. “Nah, the roads and the houses don’t melt. Though, I’ve cooked eggs on the sidewalk before. Knoxville sounds nice, though. Phoenix is one of the biggest cities in the country. Sometimes, I didn’t even recognize my neighbors. Of course, I kept to myself a lot.” In college, the only person she’d really talked to was her roommate, Brooke, and whoever Brooke dragged in and out of her life. And that had been nice, and the thoughts of it hurt her less, now. She could remember them with fondness without the bitterness, even if questions would always linger. “Dolly Parton from anywhere near there?” she asked, genuinely curious. She didn’t know shit about Tennessee. She raised an eyebrow, and kept her tone light. She fucking hated the mimes, but it was best not to come off too strong. “Nah, they’ll just shoot you.”

Raina was glad that the customer-- no, the woman! She was her own person, not just somebody who was feeding into the capitalistic society (or coffee culture). She raised a brow. “Oh, really? I swear I thought houses melted…” Raina shrugged, “Guess I was wrong. Interesting about the egg thing. You didn’t eat ‘em, did ya?” Even if the woman had, Raina wouldn’t judge. “I guess that’s one story to tell to people.” Raina finally knocked out the stain and moved to the next table, which was closest to where the woman sat. The table offered little resistance to her cleaning efforts. She set the rag down for a moment once the customer asked about Dolly Parton. “Oh, yes.” She let out a laugh. “Even if you ain’t a Dolly Parton fan, you’re a Dolly fan in Tennessee.” Her own mother who’d sworn off country music even listened to her. The older Raina got, the more she felt like she could appreciate the woman, too. “Are you a fan?” She asked with a smile. Raina picked the rag back up and moved onto the next table. “Shoot you, huh?” She hummed, “well I’ll keep that in mind.” She wasn’t sure if the woman was being truthful or not. Maybe she was. Raina straightened up after she had cleaned every table but the one the woman was sitting at. “You don’t mind me askin’ your name, do you? Feels weird to think of you as someone I’m servin’ coffee when we’re havin’ such a nice conversation ‘an all.”

“We’ve gotten pretty good about building our houses with materials that don’t melt,” Nadia explained. “It wouldn’t do to have melted houses everytime the thermostat hits Fahrenheit 451. Okay, not really. More like Fahrenheit 115. When it’s, like, fucking miserable out.” So hot that heat came off the ground in waves. So hot that it was impossible to go outside without shoes on. Nadia missed the heat, but, damn, it was dangerous. Still didn’t melt houses, though. Not that she’d been aware of, at least. “I mean, I put them in a pan, and it was really just to see if it could happen. My roommate at the time ate them, though. She said I should have added more pepper.” And not cooked them in the sun, but, hey. It was a fun experiment between two people that weren’t particularly scientifically inclined. She grinned, enjoying the other woman’s lightheartedness. “Makes sense. You know, I’m more of a rock kinda gal, but I think it’s a fucking sin not to be a fan of Dolly, you know?” She could feel the other woman’s skepticism, and Nadia sighed. She rolled up her sleeve, exposing the scar from when her doppleganger mime had shot her last year. “They like to shoot people, too, apparently.” She put her sleeve back down and gave a wry grin. “My name’s Nadia. And you? I’d hate to keep referring to you as the super chill barista in my head, too.”

Raina leaned against the neighboring table, wincing slightly as it began to make a small screeching noise from her weight as it moved against the floor. “Sorry ‘bout that.” She pulled it back into its original spot and stood up straight. “That sounds downright miserable. Now I know y’all have dry heat as opposed to humidity… not sure which I’d rather battle.” Maybe one day she’d be able to figure out how to pull water right out of the air. Maybe when her magic was stronger. When she was stronger. She wouldn’t be able to do that in a place like Arizona, she realized. Yeah, definitely not moving out west anytime soon-- at least, not to any deserts. “Well, I guess that brings a new meaning to the term sunny side up, don’t it?” She flashed the woman a smile before she folded the rag in on itself. “I’ll be honest, I don’t listen to much music. When I do, it’s all Top 40.” She cracked an embarrassed smile. “Mostly ‘cause I listen to a lot of what my momma and daddy did, you know?” she looked down at her feet. It’d been awhile since she’d listened to her mom sing trot, or since she’d watch her dad play out the drum solos in the air from Phil Collins’ greatest hits album. She felt a sudden wave of sadness. Raina cleared her throat, immediately eradicating the feeling. It was fleeting, but there was a heaviness in her chest. “Oh, you’re tellin me--” She was pulled from her thoughts as she was shown the scar on her arm. She blinked a few times, trying to understand why a mime could ever want to do that before she looked up to meet Nadia’s eyes. “Oh! Nadia!” She smiled at her descriptor being a super chill barista, even if she couldn’t take her eyes off of the scar. “M’name is Raina!” She looked down at her nametag, which she only now noticed was missing. “Nadia’s a pretty name,” She sounded it out again, “Sounds like you should be in some storybook, I dunno.” She cracked a smile, though the stab wound was still on her mind.

“Personally, I always preferred the dry heat. Easier to breathe, that way,” Nadia said. Though… Maine’s humidity and more temperate climate was growing on her. Maybe it had more to do with the people than the place, though. White Crest? She could take it or leave it. It was as fascinating to live in as it was dangerous, two sides to the same coin. She laughed at the joke, genuinely pleased by the pun. “Totally new meaning to sunny side up, for sure.” She took a bite of her muffin, chased it with a sip of coffee. She was enjoying this, genuinely. She needed to get out more, Nadia realized. At the very least so that she could have interactions like this, something that wasn’t all in her head. Her head wasn’t the most fun place to be, sometimes. “Nothing wrong with listening to the popular stuff. It’s popular for a reason, you know?” There was a wave of sadness that followed that, though, in the aftermath of the other woman mentioning her mother and father, and it caused Nadia to think of her own parents. Their disdain for her. The way her mother had told her to never call back or she’d tell the cops. She managed a smile, though, as they rocketed through another few waves of emotions, of confusement and happiness, and concerne. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to show off the scar, but it’d been what she’d done in the moment. Live and learn. Not everyone was as fascinated in scars as others. “Nice to meet you, Raina.” She laughed. “I don’t know about a storybook.” Maybe a horror movie. “I did study a lot of folklore and fairytales in college, though.”

Raina tried to push the scar from her mind. It was silly to focus on something like that. Yes, maybe Nadia had been attacked by an angry mime, but that didn’t mean they were all bad. Her altercation with the thing in the alleyway alongside Irene sent shivers down her spine and she decided to push the thought of mimes, or mime-esque things far from her mind. Maybe it was for the better, the witch thought-- the warnings that these individuals came in tow with. “Well,” The brunette laughed, “see! You’re already part of the way there!” Raina looked down at the chair across from Nadia and contemplated slipping into it, but decided against it at the last moment. Instead, she busied herself with scrubbing another table. Maybe she had missed something. It wasn’t polite to bother customers as long as she had been. “I went to school for art. One of our projects was to illustrate a children’s book…” She lazily dragged the rag against the tabletop, “that mighta gone mighty well with whatever you were studyin!” She grinned at her before folding the rag up again. She was having a nice time talking to Nadia. It wasn’t often that the patrons who came into Coffee Plus humored her with conversation. If they did, they were usually overtly rude. “Which one’s your favorite?” Raina asked as an afterthought, shuffling between the chairs as she went back to the counter to put the rag in the bin and wash her hands.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Studying the Tuatha De Danann practically makes me a Disney princess,” Nadia said, but there was no bite to her words, and she smiled as she said them. She looked at Raina, at the way she’d hesitated near the chair across from Nadia, contemplating something (sitting, probably), before she decided against it and started back to her work. “Art, huh? That sounds nice. What kind of children’s book did you illustrate?” She laughed. “I don’t know how well it would have gone with some of my research, though, unfortunately. Not children’s illustrations, at least. Sometimes fairytales aren’t as gentle as cartoons want you to believe.” This town was proof of that, too. “Favorite?” she murmured. “Damn, I think I was asked that recently, too… It’s hard to choose. Like picking a favorite kid or something.” She thought about it again. “There’s a story called ‘East of the Sun, West of the Moon.’ It’s Norwegian. Kind of like ‘Beauty and the Beast’ or the myth of Cupid and Psyche. There’s a prince in disguise, and trials, and a happy ending. Sometimes those are kind of rare, surprisingly. It’s good, though. A different take on the usual.” Watching as the other woman went and washed her hands, Nadia waited for her to look back up before she toed at the chair across from her, pushing it away from the table. “You know, if you wanna sit, at least until someone else comes in, I wouldn’t mind the company.” The other woman was nice to be around. Her emotions were nice, pleasant. “I don’t suppose you’re also interested in obscure fairytales?”

Raina smiled at the woman from across the way and scrubbed the soap in between her fingers. The witch wrinkled her nose as the citrus-y scent lifted to her nostrils. “It was a project of sorts. We all got a few pages, then it was compiled into this bigger book kinda thing.” She smiled fondly as she recalled said project. She had included her little family, including her aunt, as background characters. She still had a copy of the book back at her apartment-- unable to part with it prior to her move to White Crest. “Well, of ‘course not. It ain’t all butterflies, but I think that’s what makes ‘em interesting. Ain’t about bein black ‘n white, but it’s nice when they have happy endings.” She remembered playing princess of the castle with her father-- cardboard boxes made into extravagant towers, her stuffed animals being that of her subjects. Raina decided not to focus on the sadness that was eager to sweep through her at the memory. No, she’d remember those moments for what they were. “That sounds good, I’ll have to look it up.” She meant it when she said it. She tucked it away for later, deciding that once Nadia left, she’d get on her phone and do her own research. Finally, she turned the water off and dried her hands on a clean towel. When Nadia offered the chair across from her, she let her smile grow a little wider. “Wasn’t sure if you’d get all weirded out by your barista tryna kick it with you or not.” Raina crossed the distance between them and delicately placed herself into the chair, doing her best to avoid smacking limbs against either the chair or the table. “Not so much obscure as just havin’ really been into princesses and all that while growin’ up,” Raina admitted with a laugh. She folded her hands in her lap and thought for a moment, “I only really liked it when good things happened, but there were a few that are… a little more sinister that my mama would tell me.” The fond smile stayed pinned to her features as she let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “I know a few Korean ones, too.”

“That sounds kinda fun, an illustration project,” Nadia said. “Gotta admit, most of the stuff I remember doing were less projects and more papers. Buncha shit on, like, meaning and theme and literary analysis. I can dissect a sentence in a poem and tell you what I think the author’s trying to convey with punctuation, but I can’t draw stick figures to save my life.” Handwriting? Sure, hers was decent when she didn’t rush it. Art just wasn’t her thing. Nadia could appreciate it, though. “You’re right, of course. I’ve been bigger into the happy endings, lately. Kinda dig them, actually.” Nadia could use a few more happy endings in her life. Monster gets vanquished, protagonist gets peace. She liked that. She kind of wanted that. “You’ll have to tell me what you think of it.” She smiled, pleased when Raina sat down in front of her. She liked being able to have a nice conversation. “Trust me, nothing weird about having good company. But, yeah, I really like princesses when I was little, too. Though, I also had an unhealthy obsession with the Brothers Grimm. Kinda dark, not really for children. I liked them, though.” She’d like a lot of things she probably shouldn’t have. Nadia’s smile echoed Raina’s. “Yeah? I read the ones my ma didn’t tell me.” And she was interested, leaning forward, eyes bright. “Really? Any you’d be interested in sharing?”

Raina had her fair share of papers, too. She never liked them much, the words always getting jumbled. She’d never been much of a reader, more of a listener. “Sounds like you had your work cut out for you,” The witch smiled. “Writin’ all those papers and whatnot.” She shook her head. “Glad I don’t ever hav’ta look at another report again-- not workin’ here, at least.” She hummed at Nadia’s admission of not being able to draw. “I know you probably get this a lot, but it just takes a bit of practice. Anythin’ is art if you really want it to be.” She should’ve made herself her one of three free drinks. She decided she’d do it later once Nadia had left. “Brothers Grimm?” She tilted her head to the side, “I sometimes forget that Disney really just walked on in and ripped the stories from their original aspects ‘an made everything flowery.” Raina twiddled her thumbs, “but I s’pose that’s what a general audience wants, y’know?” She didn’t know much about what people wanted, but she did know that Tangled was one of her favorite Disney films while the actual story of Rumpelstiltskin was terrifying. Nadia’s interest made Raina’s ears burn. What if she recalled them wrong? It’d been so long since she’d heard them, or read them. She cleared her throat. “Well, there’s one ‘bout a fox, ‘bout how a family wanted-- or, more specifically, a father wanted a daughter, even if she was a fox.” She thought for a moment, doing her best to recall the details of the story her mother had told her, “They got a girl, but in the night, their livestock would start goin’ missing… and each time a brother would go out and report her to their father.” She tapped her fingers, tracing out the words her mother had said to her on the back of her hand as she tried to pull the story from memory, “And each time, the father’d kick the boys out and say it wasn’t happenin. Finally, a few years had passed ‘an two of the brothers came back ‘round… only to find that their family was gone. All but the sister. She ended up eatin’ her brothers, claimin’ that it’d make her human.” She nodded, “I think that was all of it-- I might’ve missed a few points, seein’ as I haven’t heard it in awhile.” She let out a soft laugh. “Pretty gruesome, I think.”

“It was interesting, for sure,” Nadia said. “I always kind of liked writing papers. I like words, language, the way that sentences flow when time and care is taken to putting them together. I’m, like, a lot better at writing than I am talking.” She laughed. “I don’t know, you’ve got to write down people’s orders, right? I bet that, for some people, that’s practically a research paper in length. Four pumps of vanilla, three pumps of caramel, two packets of Splenda, whipped cream on the side, shake, not stirred. All that shit.” She’d been told plenty of times that she just had to practice to get better at drawing, but she… didn’t have the patience for it. Or maybe she didn’t and just didn’t want to apply herself. “I might just, like, stick to writing, maybe. I’m sure you’re much better at the whole visual art thing. But yeah! The Brothers Grimm kind of gathered and compiled a lot of fairytales that we know of today. Snow White, Rapunzel. Sleeping Beauty. They compiled them together in a collection of several hundred ‘household’ tales. They weren’t really for children, though.” They were warnings, a lot of them, stories to keep people in line, stories to tell how things became the way that they are. Nadia listened with interest as Raina told her tale, remembering the details and filing them away for later. “Sometimes, there doesn’t really seem to be a point to stories. If I remember correctly, there was a story about a young girl that was being chased by a witch and got turned into a lake somehow. From what I remember, the witch ended up drinking her. For the life of me, I can’t remember the moral of that one. Grim and gruesome seems to be the way a lot of folk tales go.”

Raina was grateful for storytelling. It brought people together. At least, for the most part it did. She had to look at the conversation that she and Nadia were now having because of this. It made her feel good that she had successfully gotten somebody to speak to her for longer than two minutes. She knew that her too-sweet optimism could be a lot for most people, and though for the most part Raina was actually shy, those were moments where she knew she was being looked down upon. When it came to people who actually wanted something to do with her, she flourished. “Rapunzel, I think-- I really liked that one.” She smoothed her apron down as it curved around her knees. “Not a huge fan of the original though, too... “ Her expression pinched, “much, I think.” She looked towards the door as a customer shouldered through and looked at the counter, their face screwed in confusion. “Ah, dang. Looks like we’re cuttin’ short.” She looked at Nadia with a small smile before getting out of her seat. “Stick ‘round, if you want. Or, I mean-- Only if you want, no pressure or nothin’, just been lovely talkin’ to the not-so-locals, but also locals, y’know?” She hurried toward the counter and began to take the customer’s order, feeling light on her feet. Maybe everything that had happened in White Crest so far had led her to moments with those she might be able to consider friends, or at the very least, people who’d sit down and have a chat.

#chatzy: raina im #good vibrations and coffee contemplations #parental death tw

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friendofspidermannedleeds · 4 years ago

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2020 overview: writing edition

Tagged by the loveliest and kindest of friends, @momentofmemory.

I’m not tagging anyone because I’ve not been around and am sure most have done this by now, but if you’re reading this and you’ve not been tagged and would like to participate please say I tagged you! <3

1. List of works published this year

The Kid Really is Smitten (Peter & Happy, Peter/MJ. 233) Nightmares and New Beginnings (May & Peter. 733) Normal Teenager Stuff (May & Peter. 5+1, 1.8k) Breaking a Promise (May & Peter, May & Tony. 3.3k) Carry Me (Morgan & Happy. 1.2k)

Fictober 2020 Series * Works around 1k+ include: Somebody to Talk To (May & Karen. 1.8k) Fireproof (Happy & Peter. 904) Flight Conversation (MJ & Peter. 967) Incalculable Worth (Ben & Peter. 2.8k) Regrets (May & Peter. 1.2k) A Nice Peaceful Afternoon (Mr. Harrington and the AcaDec kids. 3k)

Knowing (Peter/MJ, May & MJ. 2.5k) Forever Ours (May & Peter, May/Ben. 3.8k) 2. Work you are most proud of (and why)

I think it would have to be Incalculable Worth from my Fictober series. I’m forever disappointed in the Ben Parker erasure of the MCU and had been wanting to give him the respect he deserves. Most of this fic came to me much more quickly than my typical writing inspo (that Fictober deadline magic!), and even though I still have things I might change about the final product, I’ve never been so pleased with a fic’s result and reception. Several lovely people stumbled across this fic on Ao3 and left kind comments about how moved they were, which makes me think that I did what I set out to do!

3. Work you are least proud of (and why)

This would be Nightmares and New Beginnings. I just think it’s weird. I was so new to fic when I wrote it and was feeling experimental one night. I normally write quite slowly and edit a lot, but the idea for this one came to me after midnight and I published the fic before 2am. I hated it when I woke up and nearly deleted it. Two months later, as I was beginning to post Fictober on Ao3, I almost deleted it once again. The words of one extremely kind commenter saved it from destruction, however, so it’s still there!

4. A favorite excerpt of your writing

This is going to be hard for me because I don’t actually enjoy my writing for its composition! I like the concepts and character interactions a lot but I’m not terribly proud of my actual writing ability yet. 😬

My favorite thing I’ve written lately is the ending to Forever Ours, my new fic about May and Ben adopting Peter, but I don’t want to put it here because it might be a very minor spoiler.

So here’s a little section of Trust, my last Fictober ficlet. I liked it because May’s inner turmoil over Peter’s Spider-Man life is one of my absolute favorite things to write about.

What troubles her most is this: whatever is out there, whoever he’s fighting—they won’t know he is fifteen. That he’s a child. That he loves Legos, and Star Wars, and science puns, and Mathletes. But what can she say?

He’s not asking for permission. He’ll do this no matter what she says, and they both know it.

He is asking for her blessing.

5. Share or describe a favourite review you received

This review meant so much to me! This lovely commenter read multiple May and Ben Parker fics and it was so nice to find that I’m not the only one who wants more of the Parker family than what we get in the MCU. It made me feel like my niche writing wasn’t of interest to me and me alone after all. :)

6. A time when writing was really, really hard

Halfway through Fictober, I lost one of the most important people in my life. It was devastating. Writing was nice about 90% of the time, and actually a nice distraction that helped me take a break from the grief. But sometimes it wasn’t, sometimes it felt impossible, and that was when I’d just skip writing or posting and wait until it would serve me again. (So I finished Fictober a little later than I wanted to, but I have 0 regrets about that.)

7. A scene of characters you wrote that surprised you

I only wrote one thing that wasn’t an MCU Spidey fic, and that was Carry Me with Morgan and Happy. I wasn’t expecting to write it at all, and it’s not one of my favorite finished fics, but I really enjoyed the process.

8. How did you grow as a writer this year

I grew by writing fic for the first time! My job for the majority of this year involved a lot of nonfiction copywriting, so I’m an experienced writer, but I had no idea what writing would be like outside my “professional life.” I’m glad I tried it!

9. How do you hope to grow next year

I’m hoping to finish and publish a longer (for me) fic! I’m currently working on Penance, a fic about MCU Spidey’s origins and Uncle Ben’s influence. It should be at least 6-7k by the time I’m finished. I know that is actually short, but I haven’t even cracked 4k yet 😂 Longer fics stress me out because I don’t feel confident enough in my ability to tie together so many words, and I also can’t come up with plots to save my life. So this will be a stretch for me and I am looking forward to it!

10. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta of cheerleader or muse etc. etc.)

This is, without question, @momentofmemory. For so many reasons. (Sorry in advance for how rambly this will get, my friend.)

Mem’s writing (particularly this May fic that is perfection and no I will never stop rec’ing it til the day I die thank you) is to blame/thank for getting me into fic in the first place. I’d been here in the Spidey fandom on Tumblr but I didn’t trust fanfic because I’d seen my most beloved characters shoved to the side/killed off in too many stories. I began 2020 hating all fanfic tbh. But then I read Mem’s captivating masterpieces (like this, the greatest one-shot!) and opened my heart to fic that celebrates the worlds I love!

Mem is the kindest human ever. She read ALL of my Fictober works and left the kindest comments that made my heart soar. Knowing that my favorite author had taken the time to read all of that motivated me to write more than anything else has this year!

Sometimes, when I was trying to write fic but felt burned out or uninspired, I’d go and read Mem’s writing. Her prose is divine, her dialogue is realistic, her characters and their relationships are so well thought-out--her work inspires me! I’d read it and feel excited by the ways that we can use our words to create beautiful things, and though I’m not anywhere near her level, I do think that reading her work has made me a better writer.

Bonus positive influence: @i-lovethatforme! Jess, thank you for being the world’s best cheerleader, for being endlessly kind and supportive, and for being my first ever beta in November. I go back and read your wonderful comments whenever I’m doubting myself. You’re an absolute gem and ilysm ❤

11. Anything from real life show up in your writing this year?

Yep. Regrets is about grief, and I was grieving pretty heavily when I wrote it. Peter’s regrets didn’t necessarily mirror mine, but writing it was still a cathartic experience.

12. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers

Write what you want to write! Since I don’t do IronDad or smut, I wasn’t sure if anyone in the MCU Spidey fandom would be interested in my work. I thought briefly about trying to write based on what I thought people would read, but I decided against it. I enjoy writing platonic friendships and family fic more than anything else, so that’s what I publish most. I write what I want to write, and it’s made me so happy!

13. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year?

I have a few things I’m excited about! I’ve got some Spideychelle ficlets that might be a series. They’ll focus on Peter and MJ after coming back from The Blip, featuring MJ trying to ignore her crush and Peter developing a crush. The other is Penance, the MCU Spidey origins/Ben Parker story.

14. If you could recommend only one work from yourself published this year

I think I’d say Knowing, my fic about Peter/MJ that’s more about MJ & May bonding. I just love these two women with all my heart, and I’m proud of the way this one turned out because I think it honors both of them pretty solidly.

15. End of Year word count

36,625 words! It’s not a lot in comparison to other writers but it’s a huge accomplishment for me!

#love u mem #thanks for the tag #<3 #tag games #tag game #my fic #2020 recap

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mediawhorefics · 4 years ago

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it's my darling @ardentlyadmire 's bday today so first of all you should all wish her a happy birthday!!! but secondly, i wrote her a little weird torchwood drabble as a gift. feel free to look away this is so fucking niche i doubt anyone else is interested.

@ eline i've already sent you private wishes so i won't gush too much but happy birthday !!! i love you and i'm so lucky to have you in my life. i'm sorry your bday gift is weird as hell. i have no excuse. here's 2.6k of ianto being annoyed @ norton with a hint of past owen/norton. & some jack/ianto angst. timeline wise this makes like.... zero sense because it's set before coe & outbreak. i dont remember everything about outbreak but i think it's technically ianto & norton's first meeting?? so yeah just.... ignore that. hope you'll enjoy ianto being an annoyed little bitch, i'm sorry it got kind of sad at the end rip rip. (i might post this to ao3 but again it's so niche it was basically written for an audience of one so idk) ANYWAYS HAPPY BIRTHDAY I HOPE YOU’LL LIKE IT

Oh, there is no need to pout quite so dramatically pet. You’ll be back in the dear Captain’s arms in no time. I can assure you.”

Norton Folgate’s flippant and overly confident tone does nothing to calm Ianto’s nerves, quite the opposite. What initially started as mild anxiety at the thought of being trapped somewhere in the mid-1950s had blown into irritation at the realisation that Norton – with his flip-flopping and projecting all over the 20th & 21st century – was the only one with the knowledge and experience to help him make his way back. The entirety of Torchwood One at their disposal and Norton Folgate is the only one who can help? It sounds like the start of a bad joke.

That was a few days ago though. Long enough for that tiny prickle of irritation to grow and fester, long enough for any traces of decorum Ianto Jones might have had left (and Ianto loves his decorum!) to vanish into thin air, not unlike he had done when he touched the damned alien artefact.

Why on Earth did he touch the damned alien artefact? He knows better than that. He’s not a young recruit, still green and inexperienced, eager to prove himself.

Alright, alright, maybe he is still eager to prove himself, a part of him always will be after spending so long in the shadows, treated like part of the decor rather than part of the team. It doesn’t change anything though. Ianto doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes. Oh, he makes plenty of mistakes, thank you very much. But his tend to be the almost letting a cyberman take over the world because he was in love with the human said cyberman used to be or condemning his boss to a cruel death on an alien planet in a grief-induced rage kind. Not the silly accidentally pushed a button type of stuff. It’s so undignified.

Except he did. He touched the thing and woke up near the Thames in what was clearly no longer Cardiff or the modern age. Turned out he turned up near a very popular hookup spot and having to run away from the police even though he was clearly alone was almost as embarrassing as bumping into Norton in said popular hookup spot.

All in all, Ianto would describe it as quite a bad day.

Norton offered little compassion in the face of his predicament, waving his lover away with a small “business calls love, you understand”. For Ianto, he had nothing more than a patronising laugh to offer after hearing his tale, accompanied by a mocking “surely you’re more experienced at handling alien things than that”, dripping with innuendo.

That was the first of many times Ianto seriously considered murder while stranded.

A couple of arguments with Torchwood One higher-ups later and Ianto was officially Norton’s responsibility. The rest, as they say, is history.

Deep breath, Ianto mentally tells himself. He’s the only one who can get you home unless the Doctor miraculously shows up.

For a second, Ianto does wrack his brain trying to remember if Jack ever mentioned travelling to the 50s with the Time-Lord before he shakes his head. He’s being foolish. They’re almost done. Soon, he’ll be free.

“Returning to Jack is not my only concern,” Ianto still replies through gritted teeth, unable to let Norton have the last word. He likes it way too much. Though, if Ianto is quite honest with himself, getting back to Jack is high up on the list. “I have a life in the future,” he adds quite emphatically. “And a team that needs me.” Maybe if he says it strongly enough, it’ll feel true.

Norton rolls his eyes dramatically in response, letting go of the frankly alarming machine he’s been fiddling with for days now to gesticulate flamboyantly in a manner that seems to perfectly embody a sarcastic “yes, yes, of course”.

Ianto surprises himself by realising there is one of Jack’s exes he hates more than Captain John Hart.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Ianto asks instead of continuing down that train of thought. Only misery lies there and God knows Ianto is miserable enough right now.

He thought this would be more fun is all. Not that he ever imagined he’d actually get here. But he’s always been nostalgic, he can’t help himself. It’s one of those random things he and Jack have in common, one of those threads that pulls them together, that Ianto tugs on a little when insecurity comes knocking and he wonders why Jack even bothers with him. Jack’s timeless qualities, the sense he belongs in years gone by, was part of the initial attraction. Ianto can admit that to himself. Which means that mixed in with the panic and the irritation, there was also a little bit of subdued excitement. He wouldn’t have wished this on himself, of course not, but now that he’s here… Part of him hoped he’d have a good story to tell. Yes, maybe the thought, after the initial Bollocks! moment, that he’d have a wander through an era long gone and enjoy it, revel in the nostalgia for a few days, before being sent back home with the memories of a lifetime and stories to tell crossed his mind. Something to share with Jack.

Instead, he gets Norton and his quips. Norton and his cramped flat. Norton and his inappropriate comments about Jack and their past. Norton and his even more inappropriate flirting.

Even worse, he gets the reality of the past instead of an idealised vintage postcard version. A world of prejudice and suspicion. And he thought growing up queer in Wales in the late 90s was terrible… He’ll keep his old movies and his imagination, thank you. As little as he trusts the machine Norton has been fixing up – and he trusts Norton even less – Ianto is starting to be really eager to get back home.

Norton gives him an exasperated look. “Would have I agreed to babysit you if I couldn’t even send you home?” he asks matter-of-factly, pressing a few buttons in an expert manner. He does look competent for a second there, but instead of reassuring him, all it does is make Ianto miss Tosh with a fierceness he can’t fight against. “Now be a dear and shut your pretty mouth,” Norton adds, one finger up in warning. “This is a delicate part of the process.”

Ianto calls every ounce of restraint in his body and somehow manages to stop himself from huffing. He does however fold his arms over his chest and leans back against one of the desks in the workshops they’ve borrowed. He refuses to call what he’s doing pouting. But it’s close.

An eternity later – fine! maybe thirty minutes later – Norton lets out a triumphant yell.

“There! All fixed up!” he declares, turning around to face Ianto with a beaming smile. “You are good to go back to…” he hesitates, wrinkling his nose, “well whatever it is you all do in the future.”

Ianto opens his mouth, to say what? he’s not sure, but Norton interrupts him with a snort.

“Oh no, I can easily imagine,” he says teasingly, stopping him.

Ianto closes his eyes, putting a hand to his forehead. He’s developing a headache. He’s sure he is. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?” he finally says, leaning off the table and walking back towards the thing that is supposed to get him home.

“Yes, let’s,” Norton nods.“Oh, this reminds me, do say hello to that grumpy doctor for me when you get back,” Norton adds, purrs really, and Ianto feels it like a knife to the heart. “I do like a man with a great bone structure,” he continues, blissfully unaware, somehow still fiddling with the machine he claims is ready. Ianto still can’t believe he’s going to trust it to take him home.

It takes a few seconds for Norton to realise something is wrong, used as he’s become to Ianto’s relatively difficult attitude these past few days. But the silence stretches past the point of comfort and it is out of character for Ianto to go so long without complaining (not that he’d own to it) so Norton glances back up at him, mouth opening to mock, most likely, when their eyes finally meet. He realises his mistake straight away.

“Oh,” Norton exhales quietly, a shadow passing over his face, a suddenly terribly human and vulnerable expression in his eyes.

Ianto swallows hard. He doesn’t want to talk about this. Least of all with Norton. But it is slightly comforting to notice an actual heart beneath the flippant exterior.

“Time travel,” Norton finally sighs, shaking his head. “One never quite wraps one’s head around it,” he adds quietly, almost like a confession. Ianto is surprised to find there’s actual grief in Norton’s words, not the performance of it for Ianto’s sake. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he continues, voice still low and he immediately goes back to the settings on the machine, eyebrows furrowing when what looks like an error message in some alien language pops up on the little display screen attached to the tech.

Again, Ianto can’t believe he’s putting his safety into the hands of this man and his otherworldly linguistics abilities.

“How did you know Owen anyways?” Ianto says, a bit more brusquely than intended. He’s not sure why the thought of them knowing each other suddenly irritates him, a weird sense of possessiveness settling in his lower belly. This is his team Norton is talking about. He has no right to mourn them alongside Ianto, has no right to the emptiness Owen and Tosh have left behind, the hub now haunted by their absence. Who does he think he is?

Norton smiles sadly. “Oh, you know me,” he says, the cheerfulness in his voice now obviously forced. It always seemed like a mask, of course, a carefully curated persona Norton puts on to defy others and their judgement of who he is so blatantly and for all that Ianto finds him a bit unbearable, there’s admiration there too. He’s not sure he’d be so obviously himself, so exaggeratedly so, if he’d been raised in a time like this. He hasn’t even told his family about Jack yet, scared they’ll put him in not quite the right box and he won’t be able to make them understand. There’s fear of things not being the same, of being seen differently, of course, but also… Ianto doesn’t want them to dismiss Lisa. Not when what they shared and her loss shaped his whole life. Most of all though, he’s scared. He faces bloody aliens for a living and he’s fucking scared. But here is Norton. Loud. In a time where it’s illegal for him to be so. Yet, for the first time, the loudness finally seems fake, something buried deep underneath it that Norton is clearly trying to hide... Ianto almost wants to poke at it. He would if he wasn’t worried of getting his head bitten off.

After quite a long pause, Norton finally continues. “Always playing with things I shouldn’t touch and projecting to times I shouldn’t visit. It’s how I became friends with Andy. And how I met Dr Harper.”

The use of the official title somehow bothers him and Ianto stays silent a beat too long. It’s only when their eyes finally meet that Norton betrays himself. Oh, Ianto thinks, surprised. “He never said,” he says out loud, realising half a beat too late it might come across as insensitive.

“That we knew each other?” Norton rolls his eyes to hide the hurt on his face. “Doesn’t surprise me. He wasn’t very chatty, was he? Oh, he always had a snippy remark and a smirk, but it was quite impossible to get him to say anything of substance, wouldn’t you agree? He certainly wasn’t the most emotionally open of men.” Norton puts emphasis on the past tense, still typing frantically on the alien screen like maybe he’s trying to convince himself Owen is really gone. Though of course, for Norton, he hasn’t even been born yet.

Now that’s a mindfuck.

Ianto briefly wonders if this is what it feels like for Jack sometimes, trying to understand the world in a temporal dimension no one else around him can fully perceive. Except maybe the Doctor.

“But then again,” Norton continues, unaware of Ianto’s internal musings over the temporal permanence of the man he still hasn’t summoned the courage to call his boyfriend, “aren’t we all like that?”

When their eyes meet, Norton arches an eyebrow pointedly and Ianto feels his mouth drying a little.

“We?” he echoes, suddenly aware that he doesn’t really want to talk about his attraction to men, to a man in particular, with this ghost of the past.

“Torchwood agents,” Norton clarifies, tilting his head and oh, right. The whole secret government agency thing. “We get quite good at lying and pushing it all away, duty commands. But maybe we get too good at it, so much so we can’t let go of the habit when it really matters.”

He seems remorseful as he says it and Ianto can’t help but wonder if he’s talking about whatever it is he shared with Owen that Ianto clearly will never be privy to, or if he’s thinking of someone else. Or many someones. Perhaps, not unlike Ianto, he can see a parade of faces he’s been emotionally detached from because his country asked him to. Maybe he’s thinking back on years of lies and deceits.

Norton sighs, a small thing. “Still, I liked Dr Harper,” he admits. “Owen,” he adds in a softer voice. “I can imagine his absence has left quite a void in your team.”

Ianto swallows, hard, instead of replying. “I…” he tries, fails.

Their eyes meet again, Norton’s filled with understanding. He nods, offering Ianto a sad smile.

“But we don’t have to talk about it, of course, I was merely offering my condolences, which I have done. As well as fixing this little bug, so you’re quite good to go now.”

Ianto widens his eyes, giving Norton a disbelieving look. “Somehow, I don’t trust it.”

“Of course you don’t,” Norton replies dismissively. “You don’t trust me. But I’m your only chance.” He pauses, dramatically, before grabbing the complicated machine, its many parts spilling over Norton’s arms like a mechanical octopus, the screen looking like some head to this monster. “So, what will it be Ianto Jones?”

Ianto exhales. “I suppose I don’t have much of a choice,” he says, irritated.

“Well, you can stay,” Norton says and for the first time, it doesn’t sound like aggressive flirting, the way almost everything else out of his mouth does.

“Here?” Ianto laughs, disbelieving. He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Might be safer,” Norton whispers, the tone of his voice sending uncomfortable chills down Ianto’s spine.

It sounds like he knows something. Well, he would. Jumping up and down the timeline as he does.

“It’s Torchwood,” Ianto shrugs, a tremble of fear and discomfort caught in his throat. “There’s no such thing as safer.”

Norton looks at him, really looks at him, not a hint of mockery or amusement on his face. He seems solemn. “Quite right,” he finally agrees after a beat, taking a step forward to wrap the mechanical legs of the octopus around Ianto’s torso. “Now this is going to hurt I’m afraid,” he adds, both patronising and teasing at the same time.

Ianto laughs on a nervous exhale. There he is, the insufferable Norton he’s been trapped with for days.

“I wouldn't expect it any other way,” Ianto replies, arching one eyebrows.

Norton nods. “Well, off you go then Mr Jones,” he says, holding out his hand for Ianto to shake.

“Mr Folgate.” Ianto nods back, holding the other man’s hand a beat too long. Finally, when he lets go, he says: “I’m sorry for your loss too Norton.”

He barely has the time to see the flash of surprise on Norton’s face before he vanishes in an explosion of light.

#my fics #drabble #torchwood #ianto jones #norton folgate #owen/norton #once again i am the captain of the owen/norton ship

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