#i remember predicting them being captain and vice captain back in like

[skysmadness]

my captain and vice captain <3

[jinkicake]

Mouthful

You suck them off while they’re on the phone. 

Kozume Kenma x Reader

Kuroo Tetsurou x Reader

Miya Osamu x Reader

Here you go Anon, I hope you like it!!! I am pushing the Oikawa, Kuroo, Bokuto bffs agenda because we were robbed of that interaction. I just know they would all be good friends like please,,,, imagine these mfs in college together as roommates.... It would be so perfect and they all have the brooding quiet type s/o heheh.... Also, I saw spoilers for bnha and um..... ummm.... UMMMMMM

SEMI-SMUTTY // NSFW

WC- 1,830

~~~

Kozume Kenma 

Kenma has the best poker face, nothing is going to give away the fact that he is getting head

Except for when a tiny, tiny, appreciative sigh leaves his lips…..

Then the other person on the line, most definitely Kuroo will be like ‘Yo, what are you doing~’ Yes, Kuroo can tell when Kenma is getting head and will probably praise him for it 

I think if you first try your advances Kenma would simply stare at you with disgust, making no effort to hide that same level of repulsiveness in his voice 

He’d go along with it though because he is not going to try that hard to stop you, ‘why waste that energy’ 

His nimble fingers would card through your hair and he would instantly become relaxed like his shoulders would go limp and he’d flutter his eyes shut

Kenma would still be able to keep up with the conversation though because he doesn’t really add that much input anyway

However even though most people wouldn’t find any difference in his change of attitude….. Kuroo would notice, how can’t he? He would notice the subtle changes in his pudding hair best friend and would be like ‘are you getting head right now’

To which Kenma would go bright red and tense up really quick and try to hide it but ultimately give up and just sigh in defeat ‘yeah’ 

Kenma doesn’t like talking on the phone,,, you take it upon yourself to help him relax~

Kenma pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, trying hard not to let the hiss escape his lips. He doesn’t glance down at you, he knows that if he did, he would come undone. The feeling of your warm mouth sucking him in so nicely, your cheeks hollowing around his legnth, your tongue running underneath his cock, it makes his knees utterly weak.

“Yeah, I met that dude Oikawa, I don’t know why everyone hates him. He seems like a cool guy to me,” Kuroo aimlessly rambles, going on about how he met the well-known setter. “he’s going to hang out with Bokuto and I next weekend. You wanna come?”

Kenma sighs and it’s not because of your tongue. He silently thinks long and hard before speaking up again.

“No.” 

You end up gagging on his length, blame on the fact that you tried laughing while sucking him off. 

“Kenma, you’d really like him.” Kuroo persuades and Kenma mentally pictures the pros and cons. 

“I’d rather play video games,” Kenma’s fingers rake through your hair and he makes the mistake of looking down at you. A quiet moan leaves his lips, the perfect little ‘ah’ that he doesn’t even hear himself. The line goes quiet for awhile and Kenma assumes that it is because Kuroo is trying to come up with another reason why Kenma should join them.

“Is (Y/N) giving you head right now?” Kuroo asks boldly and you gag once again, pinching your eyes shut at the humiliation. Defeat washes over Kenma. 

“Yeah.” He sighs and Kuroo hums slightly.

“Finally, good for you, take it like a champ.” Kuroo praises and Kenma’s nose scrunches in disgust. “Anyway, I’ll come by at like nine on Saturday okay? Oikawa is only in Tokyo for the weekend.” 

Kenma never can win, can he?

“Fine.”

Kuroo Tetsurou 

Kuroo is suuuuch a showoff, please he will do it just to make you flustered

He will purposely roll his shoulders back, sit on the couch all arrogantly, stare straight into your eyes as he bites his lip, use his hand to push his hair back while purposely flexing his bicep, he does it all for your enjoyment as well

He is eye-candy and that bitch knows it,,,,, anything for his lovely s/o

Kuroo wouldn’t make any noises though because he doesn’t really want to get caught in the middle of a blowjob. You would refuse to finish him off and then he wouldn’t have your sweet mouth anymore….. 

But,,,, if someone did catch him in the middle of a blowjob, Kuroo would not be embarrassed, please his ego would flourish I feel like he is into that kind of thing

Side bar…. Sometimes I go off with Kuroo and I think,,,, is this too occ? because I remember he is just a big science dork but then I remember no he is a scorpio and then it all makes sense, Kuroo is the best of both worlds 

Kuroo wouldn’t be able to pay attention at all to the conversation at hand like Bokuto could be asking him questions about something and Kuroo is just like ‘yup, it was really hot today’ like he can’t keep up….. not when you’re so generously sucking him off

Then Kenma is like … and Akaashi is like … because they can put two and two together unlike their oblivious friend

It gets to the point where Kenma will start doing something else, like playing a video game while Bokuto tries to keep a conversation going between four people all by himself

Please, Kuroo is the ultimate tease with you but….. if he is going to get pleased then he will also try to please you as well

“And then the vice-principal got mad at me,” Bokuto groans loudly, his eye twitching as he thinks back to the incident that happened earlier in the week. “it’s not my fault he wears a wig!” 

“Bokuto that was not the reason you got in trouble,” Akaashi sighs disappointedly, Kuroo doesn’t pay attention to them.

“What happened?” Kenma comments, slightly curious in the conversation at hand. Kuroo gently cups your cheek, running his thumb against your skin lovingly as he stares down you. At the sight of your teasing eyes and sinful tongue sucking on the tip of his hard cock, his thighs twitch beside you.

“… then Bokuto spiked the principals head to ‘kill the bug’ and also set his wig back to normal.” Akaashi finishes, heaving another disappointed sigh.

“See, I was helping him. He should be thanking me not scolding us for an hour.” Bokuto complains and Akaashi tries not to slap his captain through the phone. 

“This is what I deal with on a daily basis, I even have a notebook to predict his next moves.” Akaashi tells Kenma, his head still numb from the scolding he had to endure earlier in the week. 

“I don’t think anyone on our team is that bad, maybe Lev,” Kenma thinks and Kuroo licks his lips, his eyes darkening when he zones in on your mouth. 

“Kuroo, is he even listening?” Bokuto asks curiously and Kenma narrows his eyes when he pieces together why his friend is so quiet. He knows Kuroo is either getting head or giving it. 

“Ignore him, Bokuto, it’s good we don’t have to hear his voice.” Kenma tosses out and Kuroo gasps. Of course, out of everything, that is what he heard. 

“Kenma!” Kuroo snaps and the setter simply hides further under his blanket on the other end of the line. “I’m just busy,” 

“With what?” Bokuto eagerly pesters and Kuroo glances down at you once more. 

“Stuff.”

Miya Osamu 

Osamu also has a good poker face, nothing can give away that he is getting head…. There will be no slip-up from him

Unless Atsumu says something and Osamu’s competitive side jumps out for a hot second then…… then there is a slip up

‘Fuck you ‘Tsumu, I’m getting head that’s why I don’t care about your bullshit story’ cue a dramatic gasp from Atsumu and Ojiro on the other end of the line like … silence 

Yeah, Osamu doesn’t do well when provoked…. Good luck with that one 

Osamu wouldn’t say no to getting head like if you got onto your knees and pushed your hair back,,,, Osamu would be like ‘shit, here we go again’ he might be hesitant at first but then he will cockily accept it

He’ll carry on the conversation with disinterest, not really paying attention because all he can do is stare at you

Sometimes he will fuck your face,,,, literally….. he has no shame but when you gag too loudly then he lets you have control again 

Osamu doesn’t really want to get caught…. He wants to shield you away from that

His little comments that he slides in conversations here and there will probably be noticed once he stops saying them because he is preoccupied with other things. The team can’t figure out what has him so distracted though

Osamu is usually pretty gentle,,,, until he gets angry so if you suck him off while he is having a conversation with Atsumu…. Good luck

“I have to help my grandmother around the house today, so there will be no practice. Take the day to rest.” Kita’s voice sounds throughout the multiple phones and Osamu lets out a soft hum. His eyes are staring directly at you while he holds your hair back out of your face, despite his neutral face you can still see the fondness swimming in his eyes.

“Say hi to gran for me!” Atsumu says and Ojiro glances at him, the two on the same device as they walk through the city. 

“No.” Kita responds and Atsumu sighs dejectedly before going off on Ojiro when he starts to laugh at him. 

Osamu continues to pay no attention to him, instead, he thrusts into your mouth while holding your head still so he can control the pace. It feels so good, he could fucking cum-

“Yo, ‘Samu what are you even doing? Reading your old man magazines?” Atsumu snickers when he notices how quiet his brother has been. Osamu closes his eyes momentarily, trying to calm himself down from snapping. He gently pulls himself off of you, allowing you to take over the pace. 

“Eat shit ‘Tsumu.” Osamu snaps back, now watching the way your hands grip his strong thighs as you bob your head along his length. 

“My grandmother-“ Kita starts but is quickly cut off. 

“Ah, the shit that you cook ‘Samu?” Atsumu retorts, sticking his tongue out despite Osamu not being able to see it.

“Stop it, my grandmother-“ Kita tries again but Osamu interrupts him. The grip in your hair tightens as his anger grows.

“You really like that shit then since all you do is fucking eat it!” Osamu curses and Atsumu decides to tease him even more. 

“I’ve never seen (Y/N) eat your cooking, that’s how you know it’s shit.” A gasp is heard right after Atsumu’s comment, Suna’s mouth falls open in shock.

“She eats all my cooking, I feed her well but right now she’s too busy sucking my dick.” Osamu spits and you immediately pull off of him, your mouth a perfect ‘o’ as you stare up at him in disbelief. 

“You, right now?” Atsumu asks slowly and the line goes quiet.

“My grandmother is listening, I have the phone on speaker.” Kita finally finishes and the Miya twins start to count their final days.

~

Taglist.

@yams046 @why-am-i-sad-and-sleepy @xhanjisungiex @xxashshs @chaosamu @angelkogane @augustdearly @kunimwuah  @littleshopoflove @osamuonigiri @pearzuko @darksxder @macaronnv @nerdygremlin @buzzybeebee​

[thefoxholestuff]

Hey y’all, here’s an expansion of my Neil-is-dangerous-and-Aaron-knows-it post, available here. A long overdue suggestion from @sarcasm-is-my-only-langauge, hope you like it lovely!

·      So all the foxes + Katelyn are hanging out together somewhere on campus (bc I love Katelyn and I said so ok).

·      And they run into the football team, who, in the grand tradition of fictional football teams, are assholes.

·      (to be fair, so are the foxes, but in a different way.)

·      The football team is not co-ed, and not particular fans of the fact that the foxes are. Also, their games tend to be on the same days and they’re a little mad that the foxes keep stealing their crowds.

·      So, predictably, they start giving the team shit.

·      (this got really long so the rest is under the cut)

·      And Matt and Aaron can handle being called junkies, they don’t care (Andrew says it to Neil often enough that the usual connotation barely even registers any more).

·      Nicky grits his teeth through the homophobic slurs and flips them off.

·      Kevin doesn’t give a single flying fuck about being called a reject.

·      The girls can and do defend themselves from the harassment and sexism (Katelyn is used to it, the girl is a cheerleader – they get so much shit just by virtue of their sport).

·      Neil just yawns his way through the ridiculing of his facial scars.

·      Pretty much everyone on the team defends themselves from the onslaught of insults and nastiness. You don’t get to be a fox without learning to hold your own, after all. Everyone fights back, and they don’t do it quietly.

·      Except for Andrew.

·      Now, obviously, Andrew cares even less about what people say about him than the other foxes.

·      Andrew doesn’t fight back, because he doesn’t care enough.

·      But guess what, motherfuckers? Neil sure does.

·      One minute he’s sneering at a guy twice his size, verbally annihilating his entire existence.

·      And the next he’s got the guy’s even bigger friend on the ground, screaming in pain, with an arm twisted behind his back for calling Andrew a soulless psycho.

·      He would have broken the asshole’s arm if Andrew hadn’t made eye contact and shook his head (because when Neil said he might have to fight the next person who called Andrew soulless, he wasn’t fucking kidding).

·      And the foxes just stare.

·      Cause yeah, okay, they knew Neil was dangerous, like objectively knew it – for fuck’s sake he grew up in the mob – but they’ve never seen it in action before. And, hell, it’s so easy to forget. Every time he gives them puppy eyes over a gift, or melts when one of them says he’s their friend, it gets harder and harder to remember where he comes from.

·      But Neil hasn’t forgotten.

·      And neither has one of the other foxes.

·      Dan gapes. She’s… kind of proud? But also no, bad vice captain, you and I are supposed to be the level-headed ones.

·      So does Allison, for a minute, and then she shrugs, walks by, and ruffles Neil’s hair with an “attaboy”.

·      Renee raises an eyebrow and reminds herself not to be fooled by those big blue eyes again.

·      Matt is nearly in tears jfc he’s so fuckin proud of his little bro, defending his bf like that (but also Neil buddy we gotta talk about public violence, someone’s gonna report that eventually).

·      Katelyn’s a little concerned, but like... fuckin foxes man what are you gonna do?

·      Nicky stares and starts rambling, Andrew bops him on the back of the head to get him to shut up.

·      Kevin is… vaguely concerned, actually, because Neil looked a lot like his father for a second there. It takes him a couple of days to look Neil in the eye again, but Andrew sits him down and makes him talk until he can figure things out.

·      Andrew is Looking Respectfully, he promises, but also… goddamn. He’s always pleased to see his people defend themselves, it means less work for him, but seeing someone defend him isn’t something he’s used to (and it’s kinda turning him on not gonna lie).

·      But Aaron? Aaron is not pleased.

·      You may recall that Aaron is not a fan of his brother’s relationship. Aside from the mild-to-moderate homophobia (which I like to think he’s working on at this point), he canonically thinks Neil is taking advantage of his brother, or trying to. He, like the rest of the foxes, is aware that Neil is the son of a mob boss, but unlike the rest of the foxes he’s hyper-aware of it.

·      Because yeah, Neil acts nice (for a fox) most of the time. He’s cute, funny kind of by accident, and a little socially awkward in a way the upperclassmen clearly adore.

·      You know who else seemed nice most of the time?

·      Tilda.

·      The Spears.

·      The Hemmicks.

·      Anyone who’s ever hurt Aaron or Andrew or Nicky, because you see, you don’t typically get close enough to hurt someone without seeming nice at first. Aaron knows for a fucking fact that ‘nice, most of the time’ and ‘willing to resort to violence’ is a bad, bad, bad combination.

·      And he doesn’t get why no one else seems to understand that.

·      Aaron’s not quite sure how Neil Josten has managed to fool his entire team, but he’s going to find out. And he’s going to start by talking to his brother because therapy is awful but he’s learning, dammit.

·      …after Andrew is done dragging his boyfriend off to the dorms, because ew. There are some things Aaron doesn’t need to see, even in the name of protecting his brother.

[ace-oreos]

I know its impossible for it to have happened but I would like to see some Alpha vs Darth Maul. Like Maul would be like 'oh your one of kenobi's' and Alpha would be like 'i just work for the man but i will absolutely fight you'

I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it one last time here: anon, you were so very patient and I can’t thank you enough for waiting all these months for me to finish this. 

I can safely say the funniest part of writing this was trying to figure out how to put together Maul’s Drama™ and... Alpha’s penchant for avoiding drama by any means necessary. It made writing the dialogue VERY fun XD

Taglist (lmk if you want to be added!): @dudewhynotthis @merspots @the-mandalorian-clone-lover @delta-the-mando @or-te-ka-ra @huitzilinthebudgie3 @a-lil-perspective

By all accounts, the Sith isn’t supposed to be here.

Just my luck, Alpha thinks, and sighs when he remembers Fordo offered to take this one off his hands. It wasn’t worth committing the full strength of Fordo’s squad to this assignment - or so he initially thought. They hadn’t gotten word of hostile Force-users until Alpha reported his findings. 

He’d been unpleasantly surprised, to say the least.

Maul and Kenobi have history, if he remembers correctly. Kenobi hasn’t told him the half of it and Alpha really doesn’t care one way or another. He wouldn’t, if he had already devised his own method for killing someone who can very likely predict his every movement. 

Really, the only way to get one over on Maul would be to cut off his connection to the Force. There’s no way of doing that, as far as Alpha knows, so this op will require a fair share of ingenuity and a healthy disregard for conventional means of warfare. Some more time wouldn’t go amiss either, but Alpha will have to work with what he has. 

So he lets Maul find him. Draws him out now rather than exert energy that could very well be the deciding factor later. He can’t say for sure that Maul is surprised, exactly, but whatever flickers across his face doesn’t look like anger just yet. 

“I wasn’t expecting you,” the Sith says slowly, all acid sibilants. 

“I suppose you were hoping for Kenobi,” Alpha dismisses. “Tough luck.” 

Alpha can put up just as much of a fight as any Jetii, but letting Maul underestimate him could work to his advantage if he plays his cards right. If Kenobi’s teachings are true, the Sith use their anger to guide them. Alpha intends to use that against him.

“So he sent you in his place, is that it?” 

“The general couldn’t be bothered with the likes of you,” Alpha is more than happy to inform him. “He’s beaten you once already. Why waste energy proving it again?” 

That strikes a nerve. The Force might not be part of Alpha’s arsenal, but he can read the rage in Maul’s expression all the same. Better to tread cautiously now; provoke Maul too soon, and the force of his anger will be too much for Alpha to redirect.

The Sith is examining him closely. “You must be one of Kenobi’s, then.”

Alpha shrugs. “Not exactly, but for our purposes - you could say so.”

“You feel no loyalty to him?” Maul asks slyly like that will get under Alpha’s skin.

“Depends on the day.” Alpha lets his hand drift casually to his blaster. “If you’re looking for a fight, I’d be happy to fill in. Like I said, Kenobi couldn’t care less about - ”

True to his intuition, Maul’s first attack isn’t based in the Force. He’s faster than Alpha anticipated, but he manages to dodge the headlong strike. Maul pivots, and a double-bladed lightsaber appears in his hands.

Maul is fast - Alpha just has to be faster. 

Evasion isn’t Alpha’s usual style, but he recognizes the necessity given the threat he’s facing. It’s no use trying to get a round past Maul’s saber; it would likely be deflected back at him anyways. 

And there’s no way Alpha can pull this off if he and the Sith are on equal footing. But if he can make the environment work to his advantage - if he can force Maul onto the wrong foot and seize that opportunity when it arises - he just might have a chance. 

Still, Maul isn’t sloppy enough that an opening will appear without some coaxing on Alpha’s end. It’ll mean sacrificing discipline for whatever works in the moment, but he decides it’s justifiable given the payoff. 

Even as he stays in motion he’s careful not to expend more energy than is strictly necessary. It’s just as well Jango was never one for fancy footwork; Alpha doesn’t get caught up in anything of the sort now. Eventually, however, Maul catches on and pulls back, eyeing him. 

“Kenobi’s lessons weren’t lost on you, I see.”

Alpha lets him talk, mind racing all the while. The compound’s labyrinthine layout could give him an edge - he’ll just have to do what he can to avoid getting crossed up along the way. But there’ll be risks no matter what; it’s just a matter of choosing the approach that will leave him the most room to adapt.

Just as Maul begins another pass with his saber, Alpha sends a few well-placed shots towards the Sith's feet and makes a break for a doorway just off Maul’s left shoulder.

Something collides with the wall dangerously close to his head, aided by the Force. Alpha ducks away instinctively but doesn’t look back. The first corridor is narrow; the second opens up to a catwalk that overlooks a wide hangar several meters below. 

He doesn’t have time to plant charges around the doorframe. It’s a shame, really - even the Force wouldn’t reveal detonators. But no use lamenting what he can’t have; Maul isn’t far behind. 

Alpha doesn’t much like the thought of getting caught on the catwalk, either, but there’s no other route out of this section of the compound. At least it’s stable; he doesn’t like to think what could happen if he didn’t have secure footing. 

He’s nearly halfway across, just starting to think he might’ve pulled this off when something slams into him from behind and he’s plunging towards the hangar floor in an uncontrolled fall, fighting blind panic. 

It’s sheer dumb luck that his rappel line catches something solid. He clutches at the taut line, muscles shaking with exertion and a fresh wave of adrenaline. Regaining a clearheaded state of mind is a conscious effort made all the more difficult by the realization that for all the Sith underestimated him, it’s painfully clear that Alpha badly underestimated Maul. 

With the catwalk no longer an option - he’ll only be walking straight into the onslaught - Alpha draws a steadying breath and lets himself fall. The breath is knocked from his lungs when he hits the ground, but he manages to roll with the impact. 

One glance towards the catwalk confirms Maul intends to follow him. Before the Sith’s feet hit the floor, Alpha fires. Maul is nowhere near defenseless, but splitting his concentration between fending off Alpha’s attack and manipulating the Force is the closest he’ll get.

The first shot clips Maul’s shoulder; the second hits home center mass. Knocked back by the force of impact, Maul’s landing is graceless and uncoordinated. Alpha presses his advantage, aiming for vulnerable joints.

Another round sears Maul’s arm. He snarls and switches his blade to his other hand. Despite Alpha’s best efforts, a few more steps and he’ll be too close for comfort. 

Alpha risks a glance at the catwalk. After Maul’s attack, it’s unlikely it’ll hold up under additional strain. He still has a few detonators on hand, and given their positioning…

The explosion rocks the hangar. Shards of metal pepper the hangar floor, and the catwalk begins to buckle. Sheets of metal tear away and plummet to the ground.

Alpha throws himself aside, narrowly avoiding being crushed. Maul isn’t so lucky. Another section of the catwalk crashes down, and the Sith disappears beneath the metal. 

The hangar is oddly silent now; the ragged gasps seizing Alpha’s chest are suddenly deafening. He half expects Maul to explode out of the wreckage, enraged, but there’s no sign of movement. 

Time to pull out. 

Traveling to the nearest Republic outpost will take the better part of a day, but they’ve got reinforcements and his ride out of here. And if the rumors are to be believed, Fordo and his squad are just a star system away. Navigating through Separatist-infested territory will no doubt be slow going, but if he has to he can hold out until - 

And suddenly a vice tightens around his throat and he claws at his neck instinctively, his free hand scrabbling for a hold on his knife, lungs aching as he struggles to breathe, and Maul proves to be very much alive, looming over Alpha, lightsaber in hand once again.

Even as Alpha’s vision threatens to fade - he can’t breathe - it registers distantly that Maul is within arm’s length. There’s a knife sheathed on Alpha’s belt - there’s a slim chance he can - if he could just -

Maul steps closer. 

Alpha drives his knife up and in and doesn’t let go until it sinks to the hilt. Maul is howling, the hangar echoing with the animalistic scream, and the blur of red at the edge of Alpha’s vision streaks closer - 

And then the pressure on his neck abruptly loosens. He curls into himself instinctively, coughing as he struggles to draw air into his lungs. The telltale hum of lightsabers drowns out Maul’s snarling; Alpha can’t help thinking that at least if he dies here, he’ll die on his feet. Not the death he’d have preferred, but -

“Easy, Captain.” A gentle pressure on his shoulder accompanies the familiar voice, and Kenobi’s face comes into view. He’s smiling, somehow, as though he couldn’t be bothered with the ongoing duel behind him. Of course Skywalker is here too; where his Master goes, he goes. 

There’s a story behind that, no doubt, but Alpha has a feeling everything will be divulged in due time.

_____________

“Well, you certainly took your time, General,” Alpha grumbles with a halfhearted attempt at exasperation after Kenobi is done detailing exactly how he and his Padawan ended up here when they were expected at the Temple.

“We made a few detours along the way,” Kenobi answers, flashing his Padawan a wry look that suggests those detours were likely not by their design. 

Skywalker decidedly ignores his Master’s remark and instead says, “So now what?” 

Alpha sighs. “Maul escaped, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“And?”

“And you’re not going after him,” Kenobi declares, correctly interpreting the look on Skywalker’s face and the set of his shoulders.

“We don’t know what kind of reinforcements he might have,” Alpha points out. “Or where he is now, for that matter.”

“And some of us need medical attention,” Kenobi adds with a pointed look at Alpha. 

“It’s nothing serious,” Alpha says, more out of habit than anything as he knows full well his protests fall on deaf ears.

“Alpha...”

“I’ve had worse,” he insists. “Sir.”

“Humor me,” Kenobi says with enough of an edge to his voice that Alpha understands the words are not open for interpretation. “I’m sure this won’t be the last we see of him.”

“Do me a favor, then, General.”

“Oh?”

“Next time you run into him, knock his shebs to haran and back.”

Kenobi smiles. “I’ll see what I can do, Captain.”

[purplehairedwonder]

Hearts With(out) Chains Chapter 10

Fandom: One Piece Rating: PG-13 Pairings: Gen (eventual Lawlu) Words: 3233 Characters: Trafalgar Law, Monkey D. Luffy, Nico Robin, Usopp, Zoro, Nami, Franky, Smoker, Tashigi, Vergo, Heart Pirates Note: I’m taking my turn at the Corazon!Law AU because my brain won’t leave me alone until this is written down. Tags will be updated as the chapters come out.

The story title is based on the Ellie Goulding song “Hearts Without Chains.”

Summary: Law is reclaimed by the Family when he's 17 and, with Doflamingo holding the lives of his crew as collateral for his good behavior, eventually becomes the third Corazon. Years later, trapped by his impossible situation, Law finds a strange connection to Monkey D. Luffy, which offers a glimpse of something he's repeatedly had ripped away from him: hope.

Previous chapters: Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

Read also at AO3 / FF.N

When Law ended the call, Bepo felt his heartrate picking up as he considered what his friend had said. Bepo didn’t know where Law was—he kept so much to himself anymore and had practically fled when he, Shachi, and Penguin had confronted him on his way out of Dressrosa—but Vergo following him from Dressrosa was bad news. Everyone in the Family knew there was bad blood between the first and current Corazons, though not everyone knew why.

Bepo did, having seen the aftermath of the wounds Vergo had caused when he and Law had first met. Shachi and Penguin were the only others—except Violet, Bepo supposed—in whom Law had confided that history.

What Bepo couldn’t figure out was why Doflamingo would believe Law had defected, considering his entire crew was still on Dressrosa; Law would never risk them like that. Doflamingo saw to it that Law would not (could not) betray him. But if Law was worried enough to warn them, Vergo must have some trump card.

Not for the first time, Bepo wished Law had brought backup on his mission, whether it was him, Shachi, and Penguin or any of the other Hearts. Bepo’s captain was too willing to go at it alone when he didn’t have to—and now he was in trouble because of it. All the Hearts could do was be his backup in Dressrosa, waiting for his return and whatever that might bring.

Still, as Bepo scoured the Hearts’ rooms and the most likely hang out spots around the palace for his nakama, a part of him was lighter in relief. The Law on the other end of the Den Den Mushi had sounded familiar; he’d sounded like Bepo’s captain and best friend, who Bepo hadn’t heard in two years. Law had locked himself away since Shachi lost his arm, drowning in guilt and refusing all attempts to bring him out of his self-made prison. It had pained them all to watch helplessly as he pulled away, becoming a shadow of himself in a misguided effort to protect them.

But Bepo had known that his best friend—strong, brave, and loyal—was still in there, under all the guilt and pain.

And he’d been right.

Bepo’s best friend had been the one to call his nakama in the middle of a mission to warn them of potential danger while promising to return for them despite the obvious danger doing so presented.

Bepo had missed Law, and now he’d do whatever he could as first mate to support his captain and look after their nakama.

It took about half an hour, but Bepo finally managed to gather his crewmates in Bepo’s room. He knew they wouldn’t be overheard here, as Law regularly checked the Hearts’ rooms for surveillance Den Den Mushi. The small bedroom was not designed to house twelve people, but the Hearts were used to confined spaces.

“What’s going on, Bepo?” Shachi asked once everyone had arrived and the door had been shut firmly behind them.

“Law called,” Bepo replied. He refused to use the title the Family used for Law when speaking only among the Hearts. He was also not surprised by the concern that his pronouncement elicited.

“Is he okay?”

“Where is he?”

“What’s going on?”

Bepo held up a paw, and once his nakama had quieted, he relayed what Law had told him. Bepo knew frustratingly little about his captain’s situation, so when his nakama burst into questions, Bepo had no answers for them. No, he didn’t know where Law was, though he must be close because he’d only left that morning. No, he didn’t know what Law’s mission was or why Vergo was there. No, no, no, he didn’t know.

“He said he worried Vergo would tell Doflamingo he’d failed or defected,” Bepo reminded his nakama. “He didn’t know that Vergo did for sure. But he wants us to be careful in case he did.”

“Would Doflamingo believe Vergo about this?” Jean Bart asked, looking at the crew who’d been around the Family longest.

Shachi, Penguin, and Bepo exchanged glances and shrugged. Doflamingo’s moods were impossible to predict.

“Vergo is Doflamingo’s most trusted agent,” Penguin said. The intimacy of that relationship was common knowledge within the Family. “But Doflamingo also knows about the bad blood between him and Law.”

“He must also know Law left all of us here,” Shachi added. “He knows Law wouldn’t risk us.”

“Then what are we missing?” Ikkaku asked, glancing at Bepo. “What had Law so worried about Vergo lying?”

There was no answer to that. But Bepo had heard the worry in Law’s voice and the seriousness in his warning. Whatever Law was keeping to himself must be quite persuasive.

“What do we do now?” Uni asked.

“Head for the Tang,” Clione muttered.

“We can’t act like we know anything is wrong,” Penguin said, ignoring him. “We’d raise suspicions and make Law look guilty otherwise.”

“But we need to keep an eye on each other,” Shachi added.

Bepo nodded. This is what he had promised Law; they would take care of themselves, so Law didn’t have to worry about them in addition to Vergo and whatever his mission was.

“Stay close,” Bepo said. The Hearts had their own wing of the palace, complete with common area, kitchen, and training rooms, so they didn’t often need to leave; the isolation suited them just fine since they, being loyal to Law rather than Doflamingo, felt out of place from the rest of the Family. “And if you need to leave, take a buddy.”

Normally, someone would have cracked a joke about the buddy system, but the concern on the air was heavy enough to stay even Shachi’s tongue. Instead, everyone nodded in response. They would take no chances; they’d seen what happened to traitors to the Donquixote Family. There was nothing to be done other than stay on their toes and wait to hear from their captain.

-----

Law entered the lab the same way he had when he’d first arrived, Shambling through the back entrance into the darkened hallway. He headed for the control room, unsure of what he would find. He thought his bootsteps echoed more loudly than he remembered from a few hours earlier, but he knew he was just imagining it. He tightened his grip on Kikoku and kept walking until he saw light.

Once he and Straw Hat had shaken on their agreement to team up, Nico Robin had returned Kikoku, the nodachi suddenly appearing in Law’s vision as a disembodied hand offered her to him. Law managed to suppress a surprised flinch and took the blade with a nod to the woman, who smiled at him in that unsettling way of hers. Still, a feeling of calm had settled over him with the return of Kikoku’s familiar presence; she was an old friend, after all.

Between Law and the Straw Hats, they had two separate goals on Punk Hazard: stop Vergo and save the children. Law wasn’t particularly concerned with the second goal, but the Straw Hats were set on it and Law would do what he needed to in order to help his nakama.

That put Vergo, Caesar, Monet, and Caesar’s men in their way. G-5 was a wildcard. Though the Marines had entered the lab with the other half of the Straw Hats, there was no telling how long that tenuous alliance would last, especially with Vergo on the island.

Law had no way of knowing if Vergo had called Doffy yet, though he had to operate on the assumption that he had; anything else would only get him—and his crew—killed faster. As for whether Vergo had shown his face in the lab, that was another story. While Caesar and Monet would be friendly to Vergo, Law also knew that the vice admiral would go out of his way to avoid blowing his cover with the Marines. The other man was of most use to Doffy in his elevated position among the Marines and wouldn’t blow fifteen years of undercover work just for his grudge against Law. With that in mind, it was entirely possible Vergo was remaining hidden and waiting for his chance to capture Law and bring him back in shackles to Dressrosa without being seen.

Knowing the importance of doing recon before setting any plan in motion, Law had convinced the Straw Hats to let him go back to the lab alone and see where he stood and see what he could find out about Vergo and the rest of the Straw Hats. They’d been hesitant, but Law had held firm that it made the most sense for him to go on his own.

“What if Vergo did out you?” Black Leg asked. “You’d be a sitting duck by yourself.”

“I can handle Vergo,” Law replied. Now that he wasn’t hindered by Seastone anyway.

“But what about all the other guys?” Straw Hat asked. “You shouldn’t go alone.”

“It’ll raise more suspicion if we’re together,” Law countered.

“But if you need help—”

“What about a Den Den Mushi?” Long Nose interrupted. Everyone turned to look at him, and he shrugged uncomfortably but kept speaking. “If he,” he said, jerking his head at Law, “calls our ship’s Den Den Mushi and leaves the line open, we can hear what’s going on.”

“And we can come if Torao needs us!” Straw Hat concluded, satisfied. “Let’s do it,” he said, pumping his fist.

Law had rolled his eyes, but that was how he’d ended up with his Den Den Mushi’s line open to the Straw Hats’ as it sat in his coat pocket. He’d warned Straw Hat not to be noisy on the other end of the line or he’d blow Law’s cover, and the others had promised to keep him quiet. (Law hadn’t been particularly reassured but didn’t have much choice but to continue anyway.) The Straw Hats were stationed outside the lab out of surveillance range, listening as Law entered the control room.

Law blinked as he stepped inside, taking a moment to let his eyes adjust to the bright light before glancing around. The room appeared empty. Where were Caesar and Monet? It looked like he’d need to head further into the lab.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Den Den Mushi. He opened his mouth to update the Straw Hats on what he’d found, but a familiar voice cut him off.

“Corazon? What the hell are you doing here?”

Law’s gaze followed the voice to the far wall, and he blinked in surprise at a large cage partially hidden in the shadows. He didn’t remember that being there before, but he hadn’t studied the room carefully upon his arrival either. He pocketed the snail and meandered over to the cage, raising an eyebrow when he saw what was inside.

Or, rather, who was inside.

Smoker was the one who had spoken. His eyes were narrowed as he eyed Law from his prone position, chained with what was undoubtedly Seastone chain.

“How’d you get here?” the swordswoman growled at Law from next to her boss.

“Where’s Luffy?” the cat burglar demanded.

Law simply watched the group, considering. Smoker, his second, the cat burglar, Zoro, and the cyborg had apparently all been captured by Caesar and were left chained in this cage. That left the tanuki and skeleton as well as the remaining G-5 soldiers somewhere in the base. He was considering what Caesar might want with them and what this meant for Vergo’s position when the cat burglar interrupted his thoughts.

“Say something, would you?” she sneered when Law remained quiet. “What did you do to Luffy?”

“Nothing,” Law replied, turning toward her. Though he could see why she would assume he had. “We…” he began, considering how to describe what had happened, “came to an agreement.”

“What kind of agreement?” Zoro asked, his one-eyed gazing piercing. He didn’t sound as disbelieving as the cat burglar did, though his attention was focused fully on Law now.

“Was that Nami and Zoro?”

Everyone started at the sound of Straw Hat’s muffled voice coming from Law’s pocket.

“Luffy?” the cat burglar called.

Law sighed and pulled the Den Den Mushi from his pocket. “Your crew seems to have gotten themselves captured, Straw Hat-ya,” Law informed him.

“What?” Straw Hat yelped. “Are you guys okay? We’re coming!”

“Wait, Luffy!” Long Nose interrupted. “What’s going on there, Torao? Is that guy there?”

“Torao?” the swordswoman asked, confused.

Law ignored her. “There was no one in the lab except your captured friends,” he said toward the snail. He looked back to the prisoners. “What happened?”

“Caesar,” Smoker growled.

“Is that Smokey?” Straw Hat asked.

“He did something to air when we confronted him about the children,” the vice admiral explained. “Woke up here after that.”

“What about Monet?” Law asked. “The woman,” he clarified when the others looked at him blankly.

“Brook and I were fighting her before I blacked out,” Zoro said.

“Whatever the clown did to the air probably didn’t affect him since he’s a skeleton,” the cat burglar said thoughtfully. “No lungs.”

Law knew Monet was dangerous, having gone on numerous missions with her before she’d been sent to Punk Hazard, so if the skeleton could keep her occupied while they took care of Vergo, that would be helpful.

“Where’s the tanuki?” Law asked.

“He’s a reindeer,” Zoro and the cat burglar replied, along with some garbled voices from the Den Den Mushi.

Law rolled his eyes. “Whatever. He’s not here with you.”

“He was looking for the lab to find out what the clown had done to the children,” the swordswoman said. “They must not have found him yet.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you know what they’re doing to the children?”

Law shrugged, uninterested. “No.”

“You’re Donquixote’s second, you must know everything that’s going on,” Smoker countered.

“You may be surprised to know that I don’t have intimate knowledge of every project Doflamingo has going on,” Law countered coolly. The fact was, Doffy simply had too many ongoing schemes for any one executive to know all about. They all had specific projects they oversaw for Doffy, and Punk Hazard was Vergo’s. Law knew the general outline of the SAD manufacturing on the island, but that was about it.

“You still haven’t answered what kind of agreement you and Luffy came to,” Zoro interrupted.

Law turned back to him, but it was Straw Hat who answered over the open line. “We’re going to help Torao save his nakama from Mingo!”

“What?” the cat burglar sputtered.

Zoro narrowed his eye. “What are you talking about, Luffy?”

There was some shuffling on the other end of the line before Nico Robin spoke up. “One of Doflamingo’s agents is on the island and is threatening Corazon and his crew. Luffy has decided he wants to help.”

“Why?” the cat burglar demanded, glaring at Law. “He tried to kill us. He works for a man experimenting on kids.”

Looks like that had stopped bothering Law a long time ago, so he simply returned her look evenly.

“But he doesn’t want to,” Straw Hat said. “Torao’s a good guy!”

“Luffy—” Zoro started, but his captain cut him off.

“He saved me, Zoro.”

There was some meaning in those words that Law didn’t fully comprehend, but Zoro apparently did, his mouth snapping shut. He closed his eye, leaned back against the cell wall, and nodded grudgingly. “Fine,” he grumbled.

The cat burglar looked at him in disbelief. “You’re just going to go along with this?” she demanded. She looked like she could have smacked him if she hadn’t been bound.

It seemed the cat burglar was the member of the crew with the ounce of common sense Law had been wondering about.

“He’s the captain, witch,”

Zoro commented without opening his eye.

She huffed. “Luffy, he’ll betray you.”

“Nope,” Straw Hat replied. “He won’t.”

The cat burglar eyed Law suspiciously. “How can you be so sure?”

“As of now,” Law said before Straw Hat could speak, “our goals align. It’s in the best interest of me and my nakama not to betray you all.”

“How reassuring,” she sneered.

“Nami.”

She looked back at the Den Den Mushi. “Luffy—”

“Do you trust me, Nami?”

She startled at that. “Of course.”

“Then trust me. Please.”

After a long moment, she sighed and nodded, the tension in her frame deflating. “Fine.”

Even the cat burglar, it seemed, could be swayed by the will of her captain.

The Will of D., Law couldn’t help but think.

“Now what, Torao?” Straw Hat asked.

Rather than answer, Law dropped the snail back into his pocket then held his hand up and opened a Room large enough to encompass the cage. He unsheathed Kikoku and sliced the bars open. The sound was finally enough to wake the cyborg, who startled into consciousness. He yelped at the sight of Law above them, sword in hand, but the cat burglar murmured something to him, and he quieted down.

Law stepped inside, and, with three quick slices, three sets of chains fell to the ground as Law freed the Straw Hats. They pushed themselves to their feet and, stretching their cramped muscles, filed out past Law. For his part, Law eyed Smoker and the captain.

“Now, what to do with the two of you?”

Smoker glowered at Law while the swordswoman watched him warily. As far as Law was concerned, they could sit here and rot, but as a fellow vice admiral, Smoker could be good leverage against Vergo, if the bastard showed his face. Anything that made things more complicated for Vergo was a good move in Law’s book. That didn’t mean he couldn’t make them sweat a bit first, though.

“Go ahead and kill us, pirate,” Smoker sneered. “Finish what you started earlier. See what happens to your boss when it gets out that his second killed a vice admiral.”

Law decided not to mention he’d been sent to Punk Hazard to kill Smoker in the first place.

“No!” the swordswoman said. “Please, let us go.”

“Tashigi,” Smoker hissed. “Don’t beg for your life from a pirate! Where’s your pride?”

But rather than be cowed, she glared right back at him. “There are innocent children on this island that need help. It’s our duty to rescue them, so if begging for my life will help me save those children, then I’ll gladly do it!”

Law was grudgingly impressed with her resolve. “It seems she’s smarter than you, White Chase-ya.” Smoker growled wordlessly at Law, but Law pressed on. “Your presence on the island is, ironically, useful to me now, so I’m willing to let you go. On one condition.”

“What’s that?” Smoker demanded.

“Not a word of this alliance between myself and the Straw Hats to anyone. If it gets out, I will come find you.”

“Fine,” the swordswoman agreed in her boss’s place. “Now let us go.”

“Alliance?” a new voice said.

Law stiffened. Shit. He turned to see Vergo standing in the doorway to the front entrance of the room.

“Doffy didn’t believe me before that you’re a traitor, but now he’ll have it in your own words, Law.”

Next chapter

[not-majestic-bluenicorn]

Crescent || Chapter 5

Fandom(s): ATEEZ

AU: Treasure Hunters

Genre: Action, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Relationship: Everyone x Everyone, Established Hongjoong x Yunho

Language: English

Status: Ongoing

Chapter WC: 5,789 words

Warnings: Character Death, Stabbing, Fighting, Blood, Aliens, War, Funerals, Kidnapping, Attempted Kidnapping, Mentions of Child Abuse / Child Work, Explosions, Murder Attempt, Robbery, Homeless/Runaway Character, more will be added.

Chapter Warnings: Robbery, Homeless/Runaway Character

Summary:

"My name is Jung Wooyoung..." He looked at the sword and then back up, locking eyes with the man. It was overwhelming to know this was one of the people he was destined to be with, now pointing a sword at him. "What is your name?"

"Kang Yeosang."

AO3

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Tagged: @angel0taiyo​

Wooyoung had arrived at Sonne U-28 about a week ago. He had managed to locate the port Captain Hongjoong's ship had sailed from, but nothing more. No one knew where it was headed, and he hadn't had any more prophetic dreams since then; he had also been too afraid to use the necklace the Interpreter had given him. Since he didn't know where to leave, he spent the week trying to figure out more about Hongjoong and his crew from the people that had built the boat.

He didn't get much out of them though, both because of confidentiality and because they didn't truly know who Hongjoong was, just that he was well off. Wooyoung already knew Hongjoong was wealthy from what he had gathered in his dreams, after all, Hongjoong was a prince. But he needed to know where they were headed to.

The options had long run out and he was left with only one choice, to try using the necklace or  to give up on his mission, and that wasn't an option to him. Wooyoung spent the whole day preparing himself mentally to use the necklace. It was fairly simple, he just had to sleep with it on. His body would be able to draw on the power of the necklace by itself and his soul would take him where he needed to go in order to progress.

When the night came, Wooyoung sat down on his bed with the collar in his hands and observed it, making one last attempt at calming himself down before attempting to use the necklace for the first time. It was nerve wracking. Still, he knew he didn't have much of an option, so he put it on and laid down. It took him longer than usual to fall asleep, even with the smell of syndesia working to calm him down.

As soon as he entered the dream world, however, he could tell he was no longer in his own mind. The place felt foreigner to him. It was wild and full of raw, uncontrolled energy, and Wooyoung had no idea who it could belong to. He only figured it out once he stumbled upon another man, roughly his same height, but lean and with a certain roughness around the edges.

There was no doubt in Wooyoung's mind that this man was the owner of the dream. Even though he looked calm and composed, there was a certain fierceness in his eyes that left him no doubt about it. As Wooyoung approached him, the space transformed around him into an enormous ship, and once Wooyoung was standing close enough, he noticed this was one of the men that had appeared in his vision next to Captain Hongjoong and Yunho.

"Who are you?" The man asked once he noticed Wooyoung, immediately pointing at him with a sword. Wooyoung knew it couldn't hurt him, but he still put his hands up.

"My name is Jung Wooyoung..." He looked at the sword and then back up, locking eyes with the man. It was overwhelming to know this was one of the people he was destined to be with, now pointing a sword at him. "What is your name?"

"Kang Yeosang," The man replied as he put the sword down, looking at Wooyoung with a certain confusion.  "Is this a dream?" He asked, and Wooyoung nodded, a little bit too enthusiastically. "Are you part of my dream?" Now this question was a little bit more complicated.

"You could say so,yes." Wooyoung nodded, apologetically. Yeosang didn't seem to know what he was, and it felt like telling him would only make things more complicated. "Consider me an omen."

Yeosang smiled, chuckling softly. He had a pretty smile, Wooyoung noticed, immediately slapping himself mentally for it. Sure, he was supposed to eventually end up together with him, but this still felt a little too early. Yeosang didn't even know yet he was a real person! Still, his smile was pretty.

"Sure, if you say so." Yeosang put the sword away. "Why would an omen appear in my dreams?

"Well, naturally, because there is something you should look forward to in your future, don't you think?" Wooyoung tilted his head. He liked that Yeosang was playing along with him, because truth be told, he had no idea about what he could or couldn't do while in someone else's dream.

"Then you're not an omen." Yeosang smiled suddenly, approaching him. "Omen sounds creepy and scary, you're more like a..." Yeosang's hand reached forward to touch Wooyoung's hair. His eyes were so focused, wondering how any of this could be real. "Like a very cute sign or prediction." He finished, looking Wooyoung in the eye.

Wooyoung coughed softly and pushed Yeosang's hand away, embarrassed. It was ridiculous how much his face could blush even in a dream. The fact that Yeosang was laughing again didn't help much either, but made him feel even worse. Was this how it was supposed to go? Was he supposed to be flirting with Yeosang like this? He had no idea.

"Omens can be good too!" He retaliated, for a lack of a better comeback.

"Okay, okay, you're an omen." Yeosang raised his hands in defeat, placating him. "Now, why is Mr. Omen visiting my dream? What are you here to warn me about?"

"There's a ship and some people you should find." Wooyoung explained. "The ship is not very big, made of very dark wood and white sails, it has a crescent moon on its sides, it's called Crescent." As Wooyoung described it, the image of the ship he had seen in his own vision and in the pictures he had been able to get in Sonne U-28 materialized in front of them. Yeosang gasped.

"How are you controlling my dream?" He asked, eyes wide open as he admired the beautiful vessel.

"Omen things." Said Wooyoung, which was code for 'I have no idea either'.

"And why do I have to find them?" Yeosang asked, still not entirely convinced.

"That... I cannot tell you." Wooyoung shook his head. "I have to go now though."

It was clear that Yeosang didn't know what he was yet, and Wooyoung didn't want to scare him away by telling him he was destined to meet seven men and recover a legendary treasure  most people didn't even believe to be real. Honestly, Wooyoung was only doing this because he fully believed in the mission and abilities of his people. If he were in Yeosang's position he would have probably refused outright and called the Interpreter crazy.

"Alright, I guess that's part of your 'omen things'." Yeosang chuckled. "Will you come again if I need more guidance?"

"Probably." Wooyoung nodded. At least he hoped so, since he still had no idea of how to fully control his abilities and the necklace. "Sweet dreams Yeosang." He smiled at Yeosang, and when he opened his eyes again, he was awake.

--

Yeosang regretted it immediately when his eyes fluttered open, as the dream he had just had was reduced to only a few figments. Two things remained in his mind though, Jung Wooyoung and The Crescent. He had never before had such a vivid dream in his life, and he regretted not being able to remember it more clearly, especially because Wooyoung had felt so real he wanted to believe it hadn't been entirely a dream.

He let out a deep sigh and looked around. The bridge he had been living under ever since running away from his house was usually void of other 'residents'. It was easier if you didn't have to fight for space with other homeless people, but when there wasn't a community with a sense of loyalty to watch out for your back, it put you in pretty dangerous situations. 

The good thing was that Yeosang wasn't stupid. He lived day by day, watchful eyes paying attention to the movements in the street so he could choose a new target to steal from that day. He was good at this, and the fact that soldiers assigned to his planet barely cared about it was a huge benefit. He spent part of his fortune on food and water for the day and hid the rest to save until he was able to buy himself a passage off that damned planet and go find his father.

He remembered the last fight with his mother clear as day. She had never been quite the same after discovering his father was an asshole cheater and had turned to vices to try and heal her broken heart. Yeosang loved her dearly, and had tried his best to remain by her side and help her get through it, but she was so angry at him everyday. The abuse had become too much and when she yelled at Yeosang to disappear, he left.

There was nothing in his possession worth taking with him, so he pushed a couple of clothes into his backpack and left after a particularly nasty fight that had ended with a cut on his cheek. Yeosang did regret leaving her a little, so he passed by his own house everyday, trying to see how she was doing. Her anger had seemed to dissipate now that there was no one to be angry at, but she cried almost every day and it shattered his heart to pieces.

Yeosang wanted to find his father and bring him back so maybe his mother could get some sort of closure and go on with her life. The planet they lived in, Tebos, didn't help much either. The resources in Tebos were scarce, and since it wasn't a main producer of the Kim Empire, it had been left almost forgotten. Yeosang had wanted to get out of there for the longest time, but now he wanted to even more.

Thanks to the poor support of the empire, the guards were underpaid and it was easier for him to steal his way out of the city. Of course, even though he was good at it, he wasn't the best. Some people in his town already had his eyes set on him, but Yeosang slipped out of their grasp every time. He just needed to hold on as long as he could until he was able to leave that place.

--

San looked at Hongjoong as he mumbled Thisa's poem to himself for the nth time. The two of them were alone in Hongjoong's quarters while Yunho took care of things outside, every once in a while someone would come in to check if they needed anything but would leave after only a couple of minutes after noticing Hongjoong hadn't even touched his food. San wondered if he should kill him now.

It would be so simple. Hongjoong wasn't paying attention to him and he knew no one would come check on them in a while. The question was, was it worth it? San wasn't particularly appreciative of his life, but he also didn't want to die for a cause he didn't believe in or care for. Still, if he didn't kill Hongjoong, he'd be killed by his own boss. This was a loss-loss situation. 

Just as he was trying to make up his mind, the door opened with a quick motion and Jongho stepped inside, slightly panicked. Hongjoong raised his head, and as soon as he took in the other's expression, he stood up and left everything he was doing behind. San followed behind them, a little confused.

"What happened?" Hongjoong was quick to ask.

"The fuel tank is damaged and we're losing fuel very quickly." Jongho explained.

"San, check the coordinates to the nearest planet and send them to quarterdeck." Hongjoong was quick to order, his thoughts racing.

"Yes, sir." San went back to the table and got to work.

"Jongho, go back to the fuel tank and figure out if there's a way you can patch it up temporarily, you can take someone with you if you need assistance." Hongjoong instructed.

"Yessir!" Jongho exclaimed and left quickly, taking a couple other crew members he found on his way to the maintenance room.

Hongjoong rushed out of his quarters and to the deck, where Yunho was directing some other crew members on what to do. He didn't even stop to ask him about it and just made his way to the wheel, the coordinates for a planet named Tebos were already there, waiting for him. With quick precision, Hongjoong stirred the wheel and changed the direction of the ship. Tebos was almost in the complete opposite direction they were going in originally, but it was the closest planet to where they were, so a little sacrifice would have to be made. 

"Someone contact Tebos and inform them we will be doing an emergency landing!" He yelled. 

The crew mobilized immediately and Hongjoong centered himself on directing the ship. He needed to make sure that they made it to Tebos so they could get more fuel and continue with their journey. If they ran through the fuel, they could be rescued, but the ship would need to be towed and they would just lose too much time.

"Captain! We're approaching Tebos!" Siyeon informed him.

With the velocity they were going at, it wasn't long before they were right outside Tebos' atmosphere. The fuel levels were dangerously low, but Hongjoong didn't have much of an option as he had to slow down before they came in. He pressed a couple of buttons and activated the protection field which would keep the ship safe from the effects of breaking through the ozone layer of a planet. 

A patrol ship that had received their emergency call was already waiting for them, and helped guide them to the nearest port. As soon as they had landed, Hongjoong told Yunho to check with the patrol guards and he ran to the maintenance room to look for Jongho and the crew members that had helped him deal with the leak temporarily. He found them easily, all of them sitting on the floor covered in oil and whatnot and looking completely defeated. 

"Are you alright?" Hongjoong asked, paying no mind to the mess as he approached to check on them.

"Don't come close Captain, you'll get dirty." Jongho warned him, holding his hands up in an attempt to stop him.

"As if that matters," Hongjoong scoffed, taking Jongho's hand instead and helping him stand. "You all did an amazing job here, go get clean and changed, we're having a meeting on the main deck shortly." He ordered, yet his voice was gentle.

The crew members obeyed without making any comments and Hongjoong stayed back to inspect the mess for a moment. He wasn't an expert in ship mechanisms, but even he could tell it looked bad. As he walked back to the deck, he thought that maybe he should ask Jongho to teach him a little bit about it. He should, at the very least, know how to take care of his ship properly.

"What did the officers say?" Hongjoong asked Yunho once he was outside, standing next to him.

"Well, we explained the situation to them, and since our documentation is in order, they said it was fine." Yunho explained, pointing towards the patrol ship that was just leaving.

"That's good," Hongjoong nodded. "Do me a favor and get everyone here, I'll go change my clothes." 

Yunho agreed and Hongjoong went back to his quarters. San was still there, looking at the poem that Hongjoong had left behind to deal with the emergency. He only looked up when Hongjoong cleared his throat.

"Oh, is everything alright Captain?" San asked, a little bit startled.

"You know, it's fine if you call me Hongjoong when there's no one else around, I feel like through all this map deciphering we've gotten close enough." Hongjoong shrugged. 

"Ah..." San stared at him wide-eyed, at a loss of words. Great, this was exactly what he needed: to get all friendly with his target. "Okay..." Hongjoong looked at him expectantly and San cursed himself inside. "Hongjoong."

Hongjoong hummed happily and proceeded to walk towards the part of the quarters that was his room. It was separated by the rest by a wall, giving him some sense of privacy. Yunho and him slept together there, even though theoretically Yunho wasn't supposed to be there, but that was no one's business.

"I'm gonna get changed, you should go meet the others at the deck." Hongjoong hair popped out from behind the wall. "Unless you want to wait for me?" Hongjoong asked playfully, his hands already unbuttoning his shirt.

"I'm going!" San turned around without wasting a second and left the quarters.

San left the room and joined the others on deck. He threw his 'cool' image outside the window and messed up his hair until it was standing in all sorts of directions, muttering to himself at the same time. The other crew members who were already on deck looked at him strangely, but didn't ask. Everyone found San slightly intimidating, and while they didn't see him much because he was always helping the captain, the fact that they didn't know him did the opposite of helping.

"Is everything alright?" Yunho asked him, eyebrows raised as he observed San try to fix his hair again.

"Yes, everything is fine." San regretted only slightly the way his voice sounded a little too sharp.

"Did something happen with Hongjoong?" Yunho insisted, and he knew he was right when San's voice rose one octave and he tried to deny everything.

"No!" San almost yelled, but he quickly composed himself and cleared his throat. "No, nothing happened with Captain Hongjoong." Unconsciously, he accentuated the word captain, feeling better after putting some imaginary distance between him and Hongjoong. "He'll be here shortly."

Said and done, Hongjoong joined them after a couple of minutes, changed into a clean set of clothes. He greeted everyone with a smile and began explaining the situation to those who hadn't heard during the ruckus and had simply followed orders. He then let Jongho detail the status of the ship.

"It's not too bad that I can't fix it, we won't need to buy a new fuel tank." Jongho concluded.

"That does take some weight off of out shoulders." Hongjoong smiled. "The next pressing issue is that we need to get more fuel..."

"That might be a problem." Siyeon spoke, gathering everyone's attention. "Tebos is a very poor planet, it might be expensive to find fuel. We could potentially refill the tank enough to get us to another planet and buy from there." She suggested. Hongjoong hummed and considered it for a few seconds.

"This sure looks like home, then." San muttered to himself, but Hongjoong heard him and looked at him for a moment before continuing with the discussion.

"Let's try to find us a good deal in fuel, if we can't do that then I'll ask San to find us the closest planet so we can calculate how much fuel we need to get there." Hongjoong concluded, and everyone else nodded. "I'll take Yunho and Siyeon with me to barter for the price, Second Mate?" 

"Yes sir?" Hwanwoong asked, although it was more of a formal exchange, since he already knew what Hongjoong was going to say.

"You're in charge for the time being, make sure Jongho has everything he needs to fix the ship." Hongjoong ordered, briefly smiling at Jongho. "If something is missing, let us know and we'll buy it."

"Alright, sir." Hwanwoong nodded.

"Let's get to work then!" Hongjoong clapped his hands twice and the ship went back to life as everyone mobilized.

Yunho and Siyeon followed him off the ship and into the port, where they would try gathering information on where to get fuel first. Yunho immediately approached Hongjoong as they descended, grabbing his arm to pull him close and whisper to him. Siyeon, way too used to these displays of affection, just ignored them and walked a little bit ahead of them.

"What did you do to San?" Yunho asked. His face looked serious but his voice was playful, so Hongjoong knew there was nothing to worry about.

"I did nothing!" Hongjoong exclaimed, looking offended.

"He looked really...flustered, when he came out to deck." Yunho explained.

"Oh really?" Hongjoong smiled. "I told him to call me only by name when there's just the two of us, since we spend so much time together and sometimes I need a break from hearing the word Captain, you know?" Yunho hummed in understanding.

"Was that all you did to him or...?" Yunho pressed, still not satisfied with the answer.

"Okay, maybe I did offer him to wait for me while I changed clothes..." Hongjoong continued. Yunho opened his mouth in a fake gasp and Hongjoong punched him on the arm for it. "I was behind the wall! He couldn't even see anything." Hongjoong rolled his eyes.

"He's gonna report you for unwanted sexual advances." Yunho joked.

"Oh shut up! Don't even joke about that." Hongjoong groaned, shoving Yunho away.

"I'm sorry, it was in bad taste." He smiled sheepishly and put his arm around Hongjoong's shoulders. "Won't do it again." He kissed Hongjoong's temple and Hongjoong pushed him away softly.

"Alright, alright, but we're in public Mr. First Mate, let's keep things professional." Hongjoong warned him. Yunho let go of him but not without scoffing.

"Professional, sure."

--

Yeosang had been wandering around town for the day, stealing petty things to trade with other homeless people or sell them for a few coins and get himself some breakfast or lunch. He was just biding his time. He had overheard some guards talking about the cargo ships that were coming in that day and he had already planned out what he would do to ensure he could get a good bounty.

If he did well enough, he might be able to buy the cheapest ticket out of this planet and make his way elsewhere, look for better opportunities. If he did complete his goal, he would need to go back home to get all his documentation. He didn't really want to see his mother again, afraid that even glancing at her would make him want to not leave Tebos, but he knew it was a trial he would need to overcome by himself.

As he went around the main plaza, he glanced at the clock and noticed it was time for him to start moving towards the port. He was a little bit nervous, as this was the biggest robbery he had attempted so far, but he had studied the place carefully to ensure there would be no mistakes. Plus, he had invited some others to his little heist. At best, they would all get a good bounty and go on with their lives; at worst, Yeosang could use the distraction and escape to safety.

He knew it was cruel to think of the others as a distraction, but it was something they all knew would happen if it came down to it. It was, as some would say, survival of the fittest, and they would all willingly drop each other if it meant getting out unscathed. Yeosang tried not to think too much about how that mentality was wrong, because if he did, he would be easily left behind by the others. 

The path he followed towards the port was dark and small. His town was full of tall, crooked buildings that extended towards the sky and were too close together, making perfect alleyways to escape from the soldiers or to lure inexperienced people.  He had spent his childhood memorizing them, and now they had become his temporary home.

As he walked, others joined him on his way to the port, taking slightly different routes to make it less suspicious. When they finally arrived, there were several cargo ships lined across the port. The guards supposed to be taking care of the security were scattered around, lingering with no real intention of doing much. One or two ships had their own security, but they seemed from one of those cheap private agencies.

While they scanned the ships and planned how to divide them and what they would do, Yeosang's eyes fell upon a different, smaller ship that seemed out of place among the cargo ships. Something about it felt familiar to him, but he couldn't quite pinpoint what it was. The ship was gorgeous, and it also looked quite expensive, so he felt the need to check it out.

"I'll take that small ship over there," he informed the others, who looked at him like he was crazy.

"That's not a cargo ship." One commented, feeling the need to state the obvious.

"I know, I still want to check it out." Yeosang insisted.

"That is not what we agreed on, you're alone on this one." Another person commented, and Yeosang shrugged.

"I don't mind that." For some reason, he didn't want to bring them with him. It felt like that ship was only meant for him, and he felt okay not getting their help. "Let's go."

--

"You look upset." Yunho told Hongjoong as they waited for Siyeon to come back. She was the best at bartering from the three of them, and she insisted on doing it alone or they would slow her down.

"Yeah..." Hongjoong nodded, but was too lost in thought to reply.

"What is it? Maybe I can help." Yunho insisted softly.

"I'm just thinking about what San said, that this place was much like home." Hongjoon  explained, letting out a long sigh.

"And it bothers you to think that he lived on a planet like this one." Yunho complemented.

"Just look at this place! This planet is part of the Kim Empire..." Hongjoong huffed. "I wasn't sure at first but I recognized the uniforms of the patrol soldiers, what is my father doing?" His voice was low but Yunho could tell he was in a bad mood.

“And what do you want to do?” Yunho asked.

“I don’t know, I’m not sure there is something I can actually do right now, since I am undercover.” Hongjoong sighed, ruffling his hair in frustration. Yunho grabbed his hands tightly and pushed them down. “We don’t have money to help a whole planet, which shouldn’t even need help.”

“Alright, we can’t help them now, but as the Prince, what can you do to help them in the future?” Yunho continued, helping Hongjoong think things through.

“Remember them,” Hongjoong said with certainty. “I can remember them and take note of the things that need to be changed, and then present it to my father.” Yunho smiled and nodded.

“What a smart Prince.” Yunho squeezed his hands softly. Hongjoong smiled and took a deep breath.

“Thank you for helping ground me.” Hongjoong said.

“Anytime,” Yunho pressed a kiss to his forehead and let go of his hands.

Hongjoong took a few deep breaths and made a mental note of everything he had observed about Tebos so far. At that moment, Siyeon returned to them. Her face indicated that she didn’t bring the best of news, but they kept their hopes up. 

“The least expensive place so far, but still pretty expensive.” She sighed. “Plus, I heard some bad news.” Hongjoong groaned.

“What is it now?” He asked.

“Now? Did something else happen?” Siyeon raised an eyebrow, but Yunho shook his head.

“I’ll fill you in later, what happened?” Yunho insisted, not wanting to stress Hongjoong out again.

“Apparently the amount of robberies has gone up recently, and some people heard rumors of a group stealing from cargo ships.” Siyeon explained. “And we’re surrounded by cargo ships today.” Hongjoong sighed.

“Let’s head back,” the Captain said. “Let’s make sure everything is in order and then we’ll deal with the fuel.”

—

Yeosang approached the beautiful dark vessel with white sails carefully. He was mesmerized by it. Something about it called to him, and it felt almost familiar, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was. He paced around the ship for a moment, admiring it, before he focused on finding an entrance. 

He recognized the ship model from a ship his father had worked in previously. Everything he knew about ships was thanks to his father, even if he somewhat hated to admit it. Still, he had to admit that his father had given him the dream of becoming the captain of a ship. This particular model was refined and less common, since it possessed very high specs and it wasn’t particularly cheap to produce.

Whoever owned this ship was a person of fortune and power, exactly what Yeosang was looking for. If he remembered correctly, there was a little entrance close to the propellers, made for ease of access when they needed maintenance in space. It wasn't a strong point of the vessel, since it was necessary to ensure that a person doing maintenance wouldn't be locked out, but it was also well hidden due to this. Yeosang passed his hands around the ship over and over until eventually he found the little latch and pulled on it.

"Got it," he grinned when he noticed it hadn't been locked from the inside and the door opened to the maintenance area of the ship.

Someone had probably left it open from a previous maintenance check and had forgotten to lock it. That was a beginners move. If things went well, maybe they could learn a lesson from their stuff being stolen by Yeosang; if not, well, Yeosang would have more important things to worry about than teach them a lesson.

He pressed his arms against the floor of the ship and pulled himself up, trying to keep his voice quiet as he struggled to lift his own weight. He hadn't been eating properly for days so it was difficult to make use of all his strength, but eventually he made it in. After some careful consideration, he decided to close the hatch and just hope it would be unlocked when he came back, since living it open could attract other burglars.

Slowly, he made his way around the maintenance area of the ship, paying special attention to any noises that could indicate someone else was there with him. It was a risky move, truly, since when else would be a better time to perform maintenance on a ship than when at port, but it was also his best shot. The ship was dead silent however, and as he gained confidence, he started moving quicker with his goal set on the captain's quarters.

"Stop right there." A cool voice said.

Yeosang turned around as his hand went towards his belt, where he kept a dagger he had been using during his life in the streets. His hand didn't make it that far, however, as he stopped as soon as he felt the tip of a sword pressing against his neck. In front of him stood a man, eyes dead cold and expression serious. His stance was flawless as he held the sword perfectly still against Yeosang, and he knew that this could only come from years of training. Whoever was on board this ship wasn't just any rich merchant if they could hire people with these skills.

His expression went blank, giving away nothing as he stared the man down with a similar glare, almost daring him to go further. Yeosang's hand inched little by little towards his knife. He knew he couldn't win against an electric chimera with a common dagger he had found among his dad's left behind belongings, but he wasn't going down without a fight either. Just as his fingers grazed the handle of his dagger, another voice spoke from behind him.

"I wouldn't try that if I were you." Said the voice, as the mouth of a gun pressed against his back. Yeosang sighed.

"Don't bring a knife to a gun fight, or so they say." Yeosang moved his hand away from the dagger and raised both of his arms, admitting defeat.

"Wise choice." The man in front of him said, but his sword pressed more against Yeosang's neck, prickling him sightly. Yeosang hissed.

"Don't do that San!" The man behind him sounded scandalized as he moved the gun away and forced Yeosang's arms behind his back, easily holding both wrists with one hand.

"Sorry, I am not kin to people stealing on my ship." The man named San said as he sheathed his sword.

Yeosang noticed they were putting nothing on his wrists, so he made an attempt to pull them away and run, but the grip only grew tighter, making him yelp. How could someone be so strong? He turned his head around as much as he could, trying to take a glance at the person holding him down, but all he got was an uncomfortably kind smile and a shrug. That made no sense.

"I wouldn't try that if I were you, I don't want to accidentally break your wrists." The man warned, looking only slightly apologetic.

"We should tie him up and take him to the main deck," San suggested, turning around. "I'll go look for something to tie him up with, keep an eye on him."

San left and the two of them stood in the middle of the little hallway in uncomfortable silence. This was, by far, the most humiliating thing Yeosang had gone through since he had started living on the streets, stealing to make his days. How could someone hold him down so easily with one hand? He knew he wasn't the strongest, and he certainly wasn't in the best shape due to his situation, but it still felt like a little too much.

"Who are you?" The man asked him. Yeosang could tell there was curiosity in his voice, but he remained silent. "I guess not telling me anything about you might be better for you..."

"How are you so strong?" Yeosang asked instead, exasperated because he couldn't move.

"I've been doing heavy work since I was young?" The man replied, but he didn't sound very certain.

They stayed in silence after that until San came back and changed places with the other man, who held him down while San tied up a complicated knot around Yeosang's wrists. He tugged at the knot but it didn't shift even slightly, which raised his suspicions that San had definitely been trained as something. Just who was the owner of this ship?

"Let's go Jongho, the Captain will want to see him once he gets back." San ordered, and the other man, Jongho, nodded and pushed Yeosang towards the main deck.

[pateldevs]

don’t be shy; share those cho chang headcanons 👀 (thank you for blessing us with that cho chang gifset btw, i love her)

ok literally thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about how much i love cho chang and she got done so dirty in the books AND the movies and i also have this elaborate backstory for her parents bc i love her so much aaaaa anyway there’s a lot so under the cut! ~~

i have fully adopted it into canon in my head lol but her chinese name is 張秋 (which means the pinyin i’m more familiar w would be ‘zhang qiu’ which i guess is close enough to cho), 張 meaning hunter/archer and 秋 meaning harvest/autumn

the fact that her anglicized surname is ‘chang’ and not ‘zhang’ makes me think her dad’s family is taiwanese

her mom’s family used to be involved in international affairs for the british ministry of magic office in hong kong (as it was still a colony) and that’s how her mom’s family came to the uk

her parents fully embodied the enemies-to-lovers trope when they were at hogwarts b/c her dad captained the ravenclaw quidditch team and her mom captained the gryffindor team and they were both seekers

hence cho totally grew up on quidditch and played around trying to catch an old snitch with her parents from a young age

she almost ended up in hufflepuff. look at the way she stuck by marietta in ootp?? she’s so fiercely loyal!! wtf!!!

the kinds of traits that ultimately put her in ravenclaw make her a good athlete and vice versa. look at how she plays quidditch: she relies on a number of strategies besides just outright skill, usually distraction/diversion and turning the opposing seeker’s skills against them

that said i fully think her father is muggle-born or half-blood and grew up fencing, so he teaches her how to fence, and so she’s also a great épée fencer

she’s not great with offensive spells - hence her trouble in when they’re in DA in ootp - but she’s excellent with defensive charms, predicting what her opponent’s going to do, moving fast. it’s what makes her one of flitwick’s favorite students.

charms is her best class. don’t ask me for justification here it just is.

flitwick obviously sees her potential and totally invites her to dueling club even though she’s quite young for it

she’s a harpist. don’t ask me where this came from i just think if she played an instrument it would be harp

she’s a younger sibling, she’s so sensitive like fr the eldest daughter in an asian family would just internalize their emotions (this one was developed jointly with my older sister lmao)

she and cedric didn’t start out as a couple. they started as friends when both of them were out on the quidditch pitch early one morning, just practicing flying.

she and cedric tell each other EVERYTHING. absolutely everything. like fr this girl was almost a hufflepuff ok don’t tell me they wouldn’t have the most emotionally invested relationship

cedric asks her to the yule ball and quickly says it’s a really lowkey thing, they’re just friends

they’re not just friends though, she thinks she’s starting to like him because when he looks at her she feels like she can do anything, and when he looks at her it’s her, not her sister, not anyone else.

she’s secretly glad that she has a reason to turn down harry when he asks her to the yule ball. marietta thinks she’s crazy - who would willingly turn down a chance to be harry potter’s date?? - but cho just can’t bear the thought of just being ‘harry potter’s date.’ with cedric, at least she has a chance to be herself.

when cedric dies she’s absolutely devastated:

she can’t stop thinking about how they snuck out of their houses to sit on top of the astronomy tower and look at the stars the night before the last task

she can’t stop thinking about how he confessed that he was scared but he knew he’s so close to winning, and how he joked that it would be impossible for her to not fall in love with him if he won

she can’t stop thinking about how she said don’t be scared, just pretend i’m there with you, i’ve got your back (because obviously they’ve been to dueling club together and he knows how good she is at defensive spells)

she can’t stop thinking about how he waved to her before he entered the maze at the start of the third task

she feels so insanely guilty that maybe she’s the reason he died, he said he wanted to do well to impress her that night on the astronomy tower, didn’t he?

she loses sleep over it, she has dreams about that last night all the time, she has dreams about seeing harry coming back with cedric’s body, she has these dreams where she’s watching him get killed and she can’t do anything to defend him

she wants to ask harry about it at the end of the year but she doesn’t, because she doesn’t think she can handle hearing about it, but somehow it’s worse hearing rumors from everyone else

she finds herself drawn to harry because he makes her feel closer to cedric, because the loss of cedric is something they both share and surely harry must know how it feels

honestly this is what really pisses me off about how she’s written in the books, is that her emotions are so one-dimensional that they become a caricature of asian women as meek and weepy. the most her emotions ever got developed was when hermione explained how cho must be feeling after she kissed harry

like, you’re allowed to have female characters whose arcs are largely tied to and/or driven by other characters, but you gotta actually go into those relationships yk? in the books she’s only ever someone’s girlfriend and she just cries all the time but we don’t actually talk about why

she’s not just crying all the time because she incapable of moving on (which is more or less what harry thinks). she’s crying because she didn’t just lose her boyfriend, she lost one of her best friends. she stops going to dueling club because she’s lost her partner. her flying starts suffering because she thinks about all those early morning 1v1 games she and cedric used to have.

(marietta only goes to DA meetings with her because she feels like it’s the ‘good friend’ thing to do. if going to DA helps her cope with cedric’s death then sure. she goes.)

i’ve already said she was almost a hufflepuff but i have to say it again, cho loves and cares so deeply. she’s a sucker for sentimentalism. she skips dumbledore’s funeral to stand up on the astronomy tower and think about the war that’s coming.

on the last day of her seventh year, she finds the room of requirement again and spends hours walking through it, remembering everything she learnt in DA

when the war really starts up after dumbledore’s death, her parents want to move away, they want her and her sister to have as non-magical a life as they can, so she does, but she keeps the DA galleon and her wand instead of snapping it like her sister. her parents have absolutely no idea that she goes off to the battle of hogwarts. 

when she fights she’s a team player. she partners up with katie bell for most of the final battle

at one point she and katie are separated and she comes face to face with a death eater. she almost kills him. she wants to so badly. she hates what the man stands for. but she thinks about two of the most important people in this war, harry and cedric, and she thinks, they never would. so she doesn’t.

^ she doesn’t think of harry and cedric because of her relationship with them. in fact it’s thinking about her relationship with cedric that makes her want to kill the death eater. but she thinks of harry and cedric, and what they would want and do, because they are the ones who had/have the most to lose in this war.

when are we going to get a series that delves into how visceral her emotions were?! how her grief tore her to pieces! how her trauma ate away at her! how disarming a death eater and pinning him to the ground and holding the tip of her wand to his throat made her feel like a totally different person, how close she came to ending his life! how, in the days after the battle, she feels disgusted by the idea that she even thought about using an unforgivable curse. how she learns to recover and rebuild and heal!

she plays seeker for the holyhead harpies for a while. she learns to love flying again. she learns to love the stars again. 

she doesn’t really start a family because she has little interest in being associated with others as ‘so-and-so’s wife’ or ‘so-and-so’s mother.’

she always visits cedric’s grave on june 24 every year.

eventually when flitwick retires she takes his place as charms professor and head of house because if anyone deserves a happy ending it’s cho chang!!

[duker42]

Sorry this might be kind of long, but could I request a fic where the reader has this ability to connect to a person's past/future only during her climax. Since it is emotionally intimate and involves being connected physically(literal)- she is able to flashback/forsee her partner's past/future. The first time she had sex with Levi, she was able to see a successful expedition. In other words, she was able to predicted all the tactics and ambush used for a victorious mission. (1A)

💜Predictive💜

The first time they had sex was night before their expedition. Y/N had shied away from it before, making excuses on why they shouldn’t. But that night, she had come to him and practically ripped his clothes off to be with him.

Not that Levi minded in the least. He loved the fact that his girlfriend had finally decided to move forward in their relationship. The night before they left the safety of the walls and risked their lives for humanity was definitely a night where he felt the need to connect with her.

He hadn’t expected the connection to be so damn vivid on her part. He had sensed that she was cumming, tightening around him and pulled back to watch her as she came undone for him.

Her brow was furrowed in concentration, her eyes closed and she had a vice grip on him. It wasn’t the expression he had expected to see. Right at her peak, her eyes shot up and she cried out “Left flank!”

He was too close himself to stop and question her words, but continued on to reach his own orgasm. But in the back of his mind, her words were repeating in his head.

When they had cleaned up, she seemed like she was trying to bring something up. Hesitating, as if trying to find the words. Levi decided to break the ice with his normal humor. “Old safe word?” He quipped.

It wasn’t a secret both of them had been with lovers before. He hadn’t expected purity or shyness, hadn’t wanted it. While it had surprised him how long it had taken for them to be together sexually, he knew that it was pace she was comfortable with so he had not questioned it.

“No....Levi, I need you to listen to me carefully. Just please listen and do exactly what I say.” She sat up from his bed and looked him in the eye. He leaned back against the headboard and wondered what she was about to tell him.

“Tomorrow, as soon as we get outside the ruins of Plath, take your squad and head for the left flank. There’s going to a swarm of Abnormals there. Send Gunther and Oulo out to the left and Petra and Eld to the right. Have them deploy the ODM right before the first Titan goes to grab you. DO NOT let them deploy any sooner.” Y/N said, her eyes completely serious.

“How could you possibly know where and when the Titans are going to show Y/N?” Levi asked. She had to be pulling his leg.

“It’s going to sound crazy, but when I’m with someone....physically and I....you know, I can predicted things.” Y/N said, her eyes cutting away from his for the first time.

It wasn’t a lie, Levi could always tell when someone was lying to him, it was more fear that made her look away. Fear of rejection or condemnation. He remembered something from a year ago. The time that Y/N had begged Erwin to move an old boyfriend to a different location. He hadn’t, and the kid had come home in a body bag.

“That was why you wanted to have sex tonight? To predict what would happen?” Levi questioned, trying to wrap his mind around the impossibility she was presenting him with.

Y/N shook her head. “No, I slept with you because I love you. The bonus was that I could see how to keep you safe. It only seems to work if I actually orgasm.”

He smirked a bit at the fact that he would always know if she was trying to fake. But then his face went serious again. How must she have felt when she had seen her lovers death and been unable to prevent it from happening.

He pulled her against him and kissed her hair, feeling her relax against him. Sleep wasn’t going to be in the cards for him tonight, his mind was too busy planning out how to make the most of her information.

~~~~~

“Levi, you broke formation. How did you know to head to the left flank?” Erwin wasn’t mad, but he was insistent on knowing what made his Captain totally disregard his orders and head in the opposite direction.

Better yet, he needed to know how they had managed to have an expedition where there were no casualties, a first in Survey Corps history.

Levi leveled a look at the tall Commander and looked pointedly around the room at the other Squad Leaders in their debriefing meeting. “We’ll talk alone.”

~~~~~

Y/N was nervous when she was summoned into the Commander’s office. She had no idea how Levi had handled his conversation with Erwin, choosing to speak privately with him. She had been a little upset when he had refused to look at her, thinking that he had been spooked by her abilities when he had come to get her.

They had walked silently to the office, Levi only turning to look at her right before he opened the door. “Before we go in, I want you know I love you.” He said, his eyes softening as he did.

She felt better, but was still nervous. The door opened and they entered to find Erwin and Hanji sitting there waiting for them. Her apprehension rose.

“Oh my gods! Y/N! What an amazing-“ Hanji started rushing over to Y/N.

Levi quickly stepped in between her and the Y/N. “No, Four Eyes, you aren’t hounding her and playing ten thousand questions.”

He shot Erwin a look at nodded. The Commander unfolded his tall frame where he was casually leaned against his desk and smiled at Y/N. “So, Levi tells me that we have you to thank for our successful mission today.”

She felt him take her hand and give it a reassuring squeeze. “Only because he listened to me.”

“How does it work?” Hanji spit out, her eyes wide behind her glasses, her body practically vibrating from excitement.

“I don’t know. It just happens when I’m with someone. I get a flash of the future or of their past while we are....connected.” She said, her face flush with embarrassment.

“A year ago, was that why you insisted that Ryan be moved?” Erwin caught on quickly to what had happened. She and the former Scout had been together, and apparently she had seen what was in his future.

She winced and nodded. The Commander sighed heavily, knowing that he shouldn’t feel guilty, but still the idea that he could have save another life for humanity weighing on his already burdened shoulders.

“Is it only sex?” Hanji asked thoughtfully. When Y/N nodded, the scientist deflated a little.

“Y/N, I know it’s difficult, but I’ve already talked to Levi about it. We need to see first hand what you are talking about. Experiment if you will.” Erwin ignored the angry scowl of his Captain. He already knew Levi’s view on it, but that didn’t matter.

Y/N turned to look at Levi, knowing instantly he wasn’t happy about the idea that she perform. “I’m not sleeping with anyone else.” She flatly stated.

“No! Not at all, unless of course you two are into that kind of thing.” Hanji laughed as she stepped out of Levi’s reach.

“Okay. I guess I’ll do it.” Y/N said, not enthusiastic in the least.

~~~~~

Levi had insisted they stay out of his room while they undressed and got in the mood. Erwin had been about to protest when Levi had gotten a very nasty look on his face and demanded to know if they were using this as an excuse for a free peek show. It had effectively shut up any protests.

When he felt like she was ready, he called them into the room but kept his eyes on her. “Ready?”

She nodded and closed her eyes as he pushed inside her. Just like last time, he filled her deliciously. She tried to stifle the moan because of their audience, but Levi kissed her and whispered, “They aren’t here. It’s just you and me.”

He had threatened Hanji with a slow and painful death if she made one fucking comment while they were running their little experiment. It had apparently worked because while she was scribbling furiously in a notebook, she was quiet. Erwin was just watching with those eyebrows of his furrowed.

He kept his pace steady, trying to keep her looking at him as he felt her legs go around his back. Good, she was starting get into it and forget about them. His cock drove into her, causing her back to arch up with each thrust as he filled her.

He reached down between them and rubbed at her clit. Yes it would be nice if he got off, but his main focus was to make sure she came so the experiment wouldn’t be for naught.

He changes angles as he pushes his hips forward, causing her to gasp and grab at his shoulders as he moved. Her hips were moving with his, rising to meet his thrusts as she got closer to the edge.

The two observers were silent, the only sounds from them in the room was the scratching of pen on paper. That was covered by the grunts and moans, the insistent slapping of flesh meeting flesh as they came together again and again.

He felt her get close. Part of him wanted to stop it, hold her close and protect her from whatever was about to go through her mind. The other part knew that if he did, it would be worse for Y/N. It was a strong weapon to have in the Scouts arsenal, and the fact that she was Levi’s would keep her safe from misuse.

She started to buck underneath him, her hips jerking as she sought her release. He glanced over to see both officers leaned forward, eyes absorbed in watching to see her predictive orgasm.

This time was different. His cock was squeezed as she tightened around him, but her cry was almost one of anguish. He knew that she wasn’t physically hurting, her legs still tight around him and her walls milking him closer to his own release with every pulse.

Her eyes shot up and filled with tears as she started sobbing. Her breath was caught, her lungs frozen as her far away gaze was tormented. When she shattered, a pain filled “NOOOOOOO!!!!!” Filled the room.

He had finished right before, and panicked as she covered her face and cried. Unconcerned with anything but her, he pulled her arms away and forced her to look at him.

“Hey....Y/N!” He shook her lightly. “I’m here. It’s okay. We are safe.”

Tears were still falling down the side of her head unchecked as her eyes met his. She shot up and hugged him, wrapping her arms around him while her tears spilled onto his bare shoulder.

“Oh my God. Levi....” Her words were broken up by her trying to catch her breath. Uneven and shaky from the tears.

“What did you see, Y/N?” Hanji spoke for the first time, her voice not excited but concerned from the reaction of Levi’s lover.

She pulled away from him and took his hand as she answered, never looking away from him. “I saw the past.”

Levi’s eyes closed as he realized exactly why she was crying. His past wasn’t exactly pretty. It was filled with pain and loss.

“His mom, she was beautiful, but sick.” Y/N’s voice was hallow, like a victim shutting down emotionally after trauma. “She loved Levi, lived for him. Her body gave out. Some disease that was causing her to waste away.”

She looked over at him and he nodded. He had never told Erwin and Hanji everything about his past, but it seemed like they would find out now.

“He was young when she died. No more than four. I saw him beg her to wake up, lay next to her body as it cooled. When he finally figured out his mom wasn’t waking up, he cried until he got sick. Curled up in the corner of their room, wearing an old blouse of hers and waited to die.” Y/N’s tears were still streaming down her face, but weren’t as heavy as she closed her eyes against the pain of seeing her lover like that.

“His friends. Isabel and Farlan. His agony and self loathing when they died. His disbelief when he saw her head at his feet. Watching Farlan wave goodbye before the Titan closed his teeth around him. I felt his rage when he singlehandedly tore the titans that had stolen his family apart. The grief he feels every time we lose soldiers.” Y/N fell silent.

Erwin and Hanji were quiet and respectful. Erwin’s mind was reeling from the information. The look on Levi’s face had confirmed the truthfulness of her statements. And he himself had arrived just after Levi had finished killing the Titans that day. The unchecked grief and rage swirling in the shorter man’s eyes.

Erwin dragged Hanji from Levi’s quarters, giving the couple privacy after the experiment. He knew she would have to question the girl later, but he wasn’t heartless. He needed to tread very carefully if he was going to get Levi’s approval to use this predictive gift for the good of Humanity.

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[bomberlandia]

Burning Questions: Return to play, 2020 expectations, Heppell, Hooker back, BZT, Cutler’s intrigue and more

Dyson Heppell is back. Cale Hooker is back too. And Joe Daniher is trending in the right direction for the first time in years. Football is back.

The coronavirus pandemic has halted every sport in its tracks. The NBA is still yet to resume and still hasn’t figured out a safe method of finishing its year. Major League Baseball hasn’t worked out if or when it’ll start its season. And the NHL are fine tuning a path to return to play but nothing is final yet. These are just a few leagues to name, but every sport league has stopped. And every league is now trying to figure out how to come back safely. There’s no blueprint either. It’s one messy, minefield.

If there is a silver living here for the AFL, it’s that, any club who had long-term injuries, or newly sustained pre-season concerns over players have been given the lifeline of 83 days to help prepare, heal and get right before Round Two. For the Bombers, this period has been favourable. Hooker and Heppell had short-term injuries that would have seen them miss multiple weeks — in Heppell’s case, he would have missed at least half the season. Same with Joe Daniher. But with the three-month hiatus Hooker and Heppell will play against Sydney. And Daniher is weeks away from playing so he should see a good chunk of the 2020 season.

But fit bodies are just that. There’s still a slew of unanswered questions that need addressing. Some will get answered this weekend. Others will take weeks to answer, if not, a year or two. After three consecutive years of 12 wins, 2020 was meant to be the year that the Bombers delivered better than that, moved up from mediocrity and won a final. But, the pandemic has added another layer of uncertainty around the Bombers. With that, here are some burning questions that will impinge the Bombers in 2020.

*

Can Devon Smith pick up where he left off before his PCL operation?

We will know soon enough when he takes on the Swans but from all reports the knee has never been better. “My knee’s been pulling up the best it has since I can remember, so I’m really excited about the season,” he told news.com.au. My only real concern for Smith, is can his knee stand up to the rigours of AFL intensity? He’s had a decent 12-month stint without AFL competition. And being a hard-at-it player, someone the Bombers need in trenches, we’ll only know just how good Smith’s knee is in the days and weeks to come.

But let’s go back to 2018 when Smith won the Crichton Medal. That was the year Watson, Stanton and Pop Kelly retired. Heath Hocking got delisted. The Bombers went 2-6 early in the season. Mark Neeld got the boot. Daniher got shutdown with a season-ending groin injury. And the midfield had some serious holes. But Smith stood up. He averaged 22 touches and 8.5 tackles — both career highs — and kicked 17.16. And if you remember, he carried the team during the big games. Against Collingwood in R16, he collected 31d, 8m and had 13 tackles in their 16p loss. Against Carlton on a wet MCG, he laid 15 tackles along with 21 touches. His pressure and hardness around the contest was made more obvious in a midfield that was lacking grunt. He filled that void.

The complications of COVID-19 has forced the AFL to make quarters 16-minutes long. That means Smith can go full-tilt for an entire game. There’s upside to that. But, to my earlier point, can his knee withstand that kind of onslaught in shorter, more intense sets? The Bombers missed Smith in 2019. His return will make opposition midfields more accountable. He’s another goal-kicking option. And his high tackle count (in 2018: 186) will cause turnover opportunities, something the good AFL teams do regularly.

Essendon haven’t won in Sydney since 2009. Can they break the drought?

It’s hard to definitively say the Bombers can win this one when there’s an existing 10+ year SCG drought to consider. But when you think about the 83 days between R1 and R2, both teams are operating on a clean slate. It’s like the start of the season take two. On paper the Bombers have a good balance for the small SCG ground: tall key defenders, small, quick and bullish forwards. They bring back their captain, Dyson Heppell. Hooker, Hurley and Francis should stand up against Heeney and the Swans’ potent forwards. That gives the Bombers a chance to steal this one.

There’s a growing concern over the Bombers forward line in 2020, with Joe Daniher still out, Fantasia missing. Will the Bombers struggle to kick goals?

For this week at the SCG those outs won’t matter. The Bombers should be able to cover Daniher and Fantasia through a core group of Smith, Stringer, Townsend, Tipungwuti. For the Bombers to go to that next level, adding Daniher and Fantasia is a must. The good news is that the Bombers have worked out other ways to kick goals. And it sounds like this year they are relying on midfielders and small forwards to do the damage on the scoreboard. But if Daniher and Fantasia do come back soon, the Bombers will have their strongest forward set up since the 2000 Premiership: Stringer, Townsend, Fantasia, Joe Daniher, Tipungwuti, Smith. That’s not too shabby.

Dustin Fletcher is on the cusp of being inducted in the Hall of Fame but some are saying that he might have to wait a few years because of the 12-month ASADA ban. Should he have to wait?

If they decide Fletcher has to wait another year or two, because of the ASADA ban, in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big a deal. As long as he’s inducted. He’s a lock. Let’s not forget Fletcher had a decorated career with 400 games and two premierships. Let’s also remember he meets the criteria: record, ability, integrity, sportsmanship and character. No-one could argue against any of those things with any great certainty. Whether it’s now or years to come, it’s happening.

Of the players picked to play against the Swans for R2, who should we watch, and what should we look for?

Tom Cutler. I liked what I saw against Fremantle in R1 and how he moved between the backline and forward 50. His speed is impressive for his size considering he’s carrying a 192 cm frame. I think he’s going to be a match up headache every week. Andrew McGrath is another one to watch. This year will be his first year as a full-time midfielder, or at least that’s how the Bombers intend to use him. He keeps getting better, quicker, smarter. He has Cotchin attributes.

The most intriguing duo in the team right now are Townsend and Stringer. Two bulls. They really need to impose themselves against the Swans on a small SCG where spacing is tight. Both have the ability to kick three to five goals each on any given week. In the absence of Daniher they’re going to have to seize on every opportunity.

Do you think the 16-minute quarters will work in Essendon’s favour?

What I think this means for the Bombers is that they can leave their best mix of players on the ground longer without breaks. And there shouldn’t be any issues with not being able to run out games. Also: with the speed the Bombers have on their team — Fantasia, Saad, McKenna, Tipungwuti — the shorter quarters gives them breaks just in time when they might be gassed. Worsfold will still have to think about rotations.

Townsend is playing his 50th game this week. What did you make of his game against Fremantle?

He kicked three goals from nine kicks against Fremantle. It was impressive. He looked dangerous in that game each time the ball came near him. His hard-nut approach and big body will give the Bombers flexibility to play him forward with stints inside the midfield. I can’t wait to watch more of Townsend this year. He’s my new favourite player and he’s only played one game.

There will be no crowds at some games for the foreseeable future. How will this impact the Bombers?

After this week, the Bombers are in Melbourne against the Demons, Blues, Pies. It’s not really an issue yet. For most teams playing away, no crowds should neutralize the home advantage. Without the parochial and constant barracking it’s going to create more parity.

What’s up with Zerk-Thatcher breaking the rules around coronavirus?

He’s young. He’s 21. There were 16 Adelaide players who broke the rules too and didn’t get punished. There will be more young players who break the rules around coronavirus moving forward. It’s unfortunate. But he owned it. Zerk-Thatcher is a player that the Bombers need to get more games into and develop him as a replacement for Hurley or Hooker. He’s fine. Everything is fine.

The Bombers still haven’t won a final since 2004 and they’ve won 12 games in three consecutive years. What should Bomber fans expect from here, in a pandemic year?

With a clean bill of health the Bombers should be setting themselves up to win their first final in 16 years. Since 2009 their finals record has been putrid. They have scraped through to the finals five times for a 0-5 record and boast an average losing margin of 59.2. The worst defeat of that lot was in 2009 against the Crows to the tune of 96. It’s hard to predict what will happen in a pandemic year, where life is changing every day. So expect good weeks and bad weeks. I would say for this year, watch how the Bombers transition, how they defend, how the midfield holds up against intense pressure. Those are the areas they need to improve in.

__

Justin Robertson is a journalist who writes AFL + NBA features for publications including The Guardian, ESPN, Bleacher Report, VICE and Complex Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @justinjourno

[aion-rsa]

How Babylon 5 Made Star Trek Better

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There are a few patient zeroes for  proving serialized storytelling on TV viable. Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Battlestar Galactica, and the so-called “golden era” of TV aren’t possible without a few under-the-radar precedents. Different critics will point to different examples, but when it comes to science fiction and fantasy shows, that list gets a lot smaller. Some might say Buffy’s interconnected season-long arcs are the most influential, while Trekkies tend to lean heavily on the innovation and risk-taking of Deep Space Nine’s serialization in later seasons. In fact, one prominent DS9 podcast — The Rules of Acquisition — has effectively argued that DS9 created the foundation for all contemporary TV that followed. And then there’s The X-Files. 

All of these examples are valid because, clearly, in the late 1990s, there was a vortex swirling that led to a revitalization of TV conventions that was most noticeable in genre shows. Buffy and DS9 probably deserve equal credit, but in terms of its influence on science fiction, and Star Trek in particular, the series that is (sometimes) overlooked is Babylon 5. By July 1994, Babylon was wrapping up its first season, and the future of science fiction on TV would never be the same… 

In retrospect, Babylon 5 made Star Trek better in the 1990s. Like Paul McCartney being inspired by the Beach Boys in the ‘60s, Babylon 5 was the scrappy ‘90s sci-fi underdog that, in a roundabout way, inspired the best of Trek to be better. Here’s why…

Did Deep Space Nine rip-off Babylon 5? (Or vice versa?)

If you were watching sci-fi TV in the ‘90s, you probably had at least an argument about whether or not the two TV shows about people living on a space station were ripping off each other. I had an ill-informed one with my dad in 1995. My dad claimed he thought it was clear that Deep Space Nine (which premiered on January 3rd, 1993) had ripped-off Babylon 5 (which premiered on January 26th, 1994), and I claimed the reverse. Neither of us was right, but it’s easy to see why fans we’re so perplexed at the time. Here’s the list:

Both shows featured a cast of humans living with aliens on a space station, trying to work out various peace deals. 

Both had no-nonsense female first officers, Kira on DS9, Ivanova on B5 (though in the B5 pilot episode, “The Gathering,” the first officer was Laurel Takashima, played by Tamlyn Tomita, who very recently turned up on Star Trek: Picard.)

In the first season, both had lead characters who were “Commanders” not “Captains.”

Both of these Commanders (Sisko and Sinclair) were veterans of major battles/wars, and their characters were (initially) defined by this experience.

Both space stations were positioned next to a strategic portal through space; the Wormhole in DS9 and a major JumpGate in B5.

And finally, both shows expected the viewer to have watched some, if not all, of the previous episodes in order to know what was going on. Again, in the ‘90s, this was not common for any TV.

So, what’s the deal? Well, as Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski has gone-on record saying many, many times: “Were Pillar and Berman [DS9 creators] aware of B5 at any time? No. Of that, I am also confident. The only question in my mind is to what degree did the development people steer them?” 

Babylon 5 had been in development since 1987, but there’s not really any reason to believe that camp Star Trek was super-interested in ripping off a space station show and using it for its own purposes. So, the theory floated by JMS and others is basically this: Because B5 had been pitched to Paramount before landing with Warner Bros, it’s feasible that Paramount Studio executives encouraged the DS9 team to use various elements from the B5 pitch without telling them about the existence of B5. There’s also one rumor that states that Warner and Paramount were planning on launching a joint network in the early ‘90s, and that from a studio-level point-of-view, at some point in time, Babylon 5 and DS9 WERE THE SAME SHOW, even if the people making the shows were unaware of that. That last one is pretty out-there, and also hasn’t been publicly verified, so, there’s a good bet it might not be accurate. 

Bottom line: Today, most consider the similarities between B5 and DS9 to be superficial and mostly coincidental. It’s water under the space bridge, Wormhole or Jumpgate. And yet, there are more concrete connections.

The Babylon 5 + Star Trek connections 

In front of the camera, Babylon 5 had a few obvious Star Trek connections. The recurring villain Alfred Bester (named after the famous SF novelist) was played by Walter Koenig, best known to Trekkies as Pavel Chekov. Patricia Tallman, who played telepath Lyta Alexander on B5, was a familiar stunt performer on The Next Generation and DS9 (often doubling for Gates McFadden, Nana Visitor, and Terry Farrell ) and also appeared in notable episodes like “Starship Mine.” On top of that, at the height of the rivalry between B5 and Star Trek, Majel Barret — the first lady of Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry’s widow — guest-starred in the 1996 Babylon 5 episode “Point of No Return.” She played a character named Lady Morella, the widow of the Emperor of the planet Centauri Prime. This cameo was a calculated move on the part of B5 creator JMS and Barret. Basically, the goal here was to send a message to all fandoms: Be cool.

Behind-the-scenes, there were a few more big Star Trek connections. Harlan Ellison was a “Creative Consultant” for Babylon 5 and Trekkies obviously know his mega-famous Trek episode, “City on the Edge of Forever.” And, JMS himself was also a big Trekkie. But we’ll get to that.

How Babylon 5 (maybe) made Trek writing better in the ‘90s

Okay. So, there’s no reason to believe that Deep Space Nine ripped-off Babylon 5 in the ‘90s, but that doesn’t mean Deep Space Nine and Voyager weren’t made better by the existence of some friendly competition. Documentaries like What We Left Behind make it clear that DS9 had its own agenda, separate and apart, from, well, pretty much anything. That said, DS9 didn’t start out as a serialized show. Those big story arcs came later. Babylon 5 on the other hand, did start out serialized, which when you consider that most seasons were 22 episodes long, that’s really saying something. DS9 always had ongoing storylines, but the heavy serialization — the types of back-to-back story arcs that happened during the Dominion War — happened years after the show got off the ground. Did Babylon 5 give the writers’ room of DS9 the confidence to go this route? Most would probably say no. And yet, B5’s serialization was its signature. With DS9, the serialization became its signature eventually. 

Adam Nimoy, son of Leonard Nimoy, directed the most pivotal episode of Babylon 5, the 1996 season 3 finale, “Z’ ha’dum.” These days, this kind of thing happens all the time — Jonathan Frakes directs episodes of Star Trek: Discovery and The Orville in the same year. But back in 1996, this kind of thing was more shocking. It’s not provable, but with so many Star Trek people working on Babylon 5, it feels unlikely that the writers and producers never watched the show. Because if they had, it seems like they would have been fired-up. 

How Babylon 5 saved Star Trek’s special effects in the ‘90s

In the early 1990s, real sci-fi on TV didn’t use CGI. If you wanted to do spaceships, you used models. Even the sci-fi epic seaQuest DSV got away with heavy CGI use because, in essence, the ships were half-hidden underwater. But not Babylon 5. From 1994 onward, everything about the series was CGI. Initially, the VFX company that provided these effects was a company called Foundation Imaging. Because B5 had a budget of roughly a third of a Trek series of that era, CGI effects were the only way to survive. You might not think the CGI on B5 looks that realistic now, but you have to put it in context. Outside of maybe The Last Starfighter, nobody had really dared to do outer space ship VFX with anything other than models. B5 proved it could be done. The series also pioneered virtual sets, a practice that every single sci-fi show benefits from to this day.

But this isn’t an instance of Star Trek noticing someone doing CGI and thinking that it was a good idea. Foundation Imaging literally became a part of the Star Trek franchise in 1996. After 1995, Warner Bros decided to create the CGI for Babylon 5 in-house, which left Foundation Imaging in trouble. Luckily in 1996, the company started doing CGI for Star Trek: Voyager, which led to a longtime association with the Trek franchise. Up until 1996, for spaceship exteriors, Trek almost always used models. But that started to change after Foundation Imaging began working on Voyager. Though another VFX company — Digital Muse — did a bunch of DS9’s effects, Foundation Imaging was eventually needed on DS9 as well. Remember the greatest spaceship battle in all of DS9? Yep, that’s (mostly) Foundation Imaging.

In “Sacrifice of Angels,” the scope of the starship battle was too big for models to be used, and the workload too large for Digital Muse to handle alone. And so, Foundation was responsible for the epic moment in which the USS Defiant breaks through the Dominion lines. For most DS9 fans, this exact scene defines why the series is legit awesome. And, the truth is, if Babylon 5 hadn’t employed Foundation Imaging, if Babylon 5 hadn’t relied on CGI effects, the Defiant might not have flown like that. Everyone knows great VFX can’t save a bad sci-fi movie or TV series. But, in the late 90s, it was also true that bad VFX could prevent great sci-fi from being accepted. If Trek hadn’t slowly made the switch to CGI, it’s hard to believe Voyager would have continued to be exciting. Without Babylon 5 and Foundation, you can forget “Year of Hell.”

How Babylon 5’s creator predicted a Star Trek reboot

 In 2005, after the cancelation of Enterprise was announced, JMS and Bryce Zabel co-authored a treatment for a possible reboot of Star Trek. This outline wasn’t done because anyone asked them to. It was done out of love for Star Trek. The basic concept was, at the time, fairly radical — do an entire reboot of Star Trek, in fact, the pitch was called Star Trek: Re-Boot the Universe. The idea was to give a new origin story for Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest of the TOS crew. JMS used examples from his work in comic books: Fans can accept that this happens in a different universe. Sound familiar? 

By 2009, the entire trajectory of Star Trek was redefined by the first J.J. Abrams reboot movie, which, superficially, is what JMS and Zabel pitched. True, the current Star Trek renaissance has gone away from the reboot universe. But, the viability for big-budget, cinematic Star Trek probably couldn’t have happened without the reboots. Again, we can’t prove that the JMS/Zabel pitch inspired Paramount to do their own reboot, but just like there may have been some synergy between DS9 and B5, the basic pitch is just too similar to ignore. 

Conclusion

Babylon 5 was a not a Star Trek rip-off, but it did take place in the 23rd Century, and like the classic Trek, featured heroic human starship captains and their alien allies teaming-up to save the galaxy. In a sense, there was a retro-feeling to all of Babylon 5 that probably reminded ‘90s Trekkies more of TOS than of TNG or DS9. Throw Walter Koenig and Harlan Ellison into the mix, and B5 was like a tribute band for Star Trek: The Original Series. These days, fans of The Orville make similar comparisons between that series and the TNG heyday of the ‘90s. The difference, of course, is that B5 was created by J. Michael Straczynski, a guy who cut his teeth literally creating the scripts for your favorite ‘80s cartoons; from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe to The Real Ghostbusters. In short, Straczynski was someone who understood what sci-fi TV was in the ‘90s, and he knew its limitations. When he set out to make B5 he clearly did it with a lot of love for Star Trek. JMS  hired Star Trek actors for Babylon 5. He attempted to bridge the divide between Trek fandoms and the B5 fandoms. He even dreamed up a way to bring Trek back from the dead after it was seemingly canceled in 2005. J. Michael Straczynski maybe never formally wrote for Star Trek, but without him, and without Babylon 5, the world of Trek would have been much, much darker.

The post How Babylon 5 Made Star Trek Better appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[bountyofbeads]

2020 Iowa Caucus Updates: Delayed Results Lead to Confusion https://nyti.ms/391M8gE

I know the voters of Iowa takes their role seriously, but I am so tired of being beholden to the interests of a single small state in the Midwest. We need a national primary, not to mention an end to the electoral college.

First the Des Moines Register poll is cancelled at the last minute and now the caucus results are delayed beyond reason for “quality control”. Both events drastically altering the news cycle about the candidates in the race. It really makes you wonder.

2020 Iowa Caucus Updates: Delayed Results Lead to Confusion

Multiple Democratic candidates said they expected to finish strong in the caucuses, though official results appeared to be a ways off.

By The New York Times |Published Feb. 3, 2020 Updated Feb. 4, 2020, 8:01 a.m. ET | Posted February 4, 2020 |

The release of Iowa caucus results was delayed after inconsistencies in the reporting of data. “This is not a hack or an intrusion,” said a spokeswoman for the state Democratic Party. The party is using photos of results and a paper trail to validate the results.

The lack of results didn’t stop multiple Democratic candidates from addressing their supporters late on Monday night. Nearly all claimed that they expected a strong finish in the state, whenever the results are eventually announced.

There are 41 delegates up for grabs, a tiny fraction of the 1,991 delegates needed to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

Follow our results page here.

Here’s what you need to know:

IOWA DEMOCRATIC PARTY HOPES TO REPORT RESULTS ON TUESDAY.

Troy Price, the chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, said shortly after 1 a.m. that he expected to have caucus results to report “later today” after party officials had manually tallied the data.

On a brief conference call with reporters, Mr. Price stressed that the caucus results were being delayed because of problems reporting delegate totals from the more than 1,600 precincts, not because the system had been hacked.

“This is taking longer than expected,” he said. “The system is in place to make sure we can report results with full confidence.”

Several hours after the caucuses ended, the state party still has not publicly reported any results. Mr. Price did not take questions, and the call ended after he finished reading his statement.

He said the system the party put in place for 2020, which requires written records for each precinct’s results, was implemented in case such a communications breakdown took place. “We have backups in place for this reason,” he said. “We are updating campaigns and will continue to provide updates as they are available.”

‘INCONSISTENCIES’ IN CAUCUS DATA LEAD TO DELAY.

Results in the Iowa Democratic caucuses were delayed Monday evening, creating widespread confusion among the presidential campaigns. Party officials said the results had been delayed because of “inconsistencies” in their reporting. The reporting problems are believed to have only delayed the results, not called them into question.

“We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” said Mandy McClure, the party’s communications director. “In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report. This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion. The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.”

On a conference call with the presidential campaigns, Iowa Democratic Party officials said the delay was because of the new rules requiring caucus leaders to report three sets of numbers to party headquarters, rather than just the delegate totals.

Representatives from the campaigns became angry at the party officials, who hung up after being asked about when results might be known, according to two people who listened to the call.

Since the caucuses began 50 years ago, Iowa Democrats reported only one number: the delegate count from each of the state’s precincts.

But after the razor-close 2016 race in Iowa between Hillary Clinton and Mr. Sanders, Mr. Sanders’s allies pushed the Democratic National Committee to require caucus states to track and report the raw numbers of how many people backed each candidate.

For Iowa, the new reporting standards meant counting how many people backed each candidate on the first and second alignment. That change, requiring the reporting of three separate numbers from each of the state’s more than 1,600 precincts, has slowed the gathering of data to a crawl.

Additionally, many precinct chairs across the state abandoned the new app that was built to help tabulate and report results as they struggled to log in. They opted instead to use the telephone hotline to report.

“I have had three precincts unable to report results,” said William Baresel, the Floyd County chair.

One rural county chairman took to Twitter to report results from a handful of precincts before calling it a night.

Already, a number of prominent Democrats have questioned the role of Iowa casting the first ballots in the primary process, criticizing the largely white, older state as unrepresentative of the diversity of their party.

Technical issues, happening in the midst of such a highly-watched caucus, could contribute to doubts about Iowa’s standing in the primary process.

Listen to ‘The Daily’: A Very Long Night in IOWA A story of caucusing and confusion from a middle school GYM. TIME 38:58, Listen on website)

TRUMP CALLS CAUCUSES ‘AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER.’

In the annals of expected news, President Trump won the G.O.P. caucuses in Iowa.

The contest was largely symbolic: While Democrats have saturated the Iowa airwaves for over a year, Mr. Trump faced little opposition in the Republican caucuses. In past years, Republicans have canceled their caucuses when an incumbent president was running for re-election.

Still, Mr. Trump and his team have used the past week to try and grab some attention away from the Democrats. On Thursday, Mr. Trump drew more than 7,000 fans to a rally where he predicted that Iowa would deliver for him again in November. He also deployed cabinet secretaries, top Republican officials and Trump family members to the state.

Early Tuesday, Mr. Trump called the confusion on the Democratic side “an unmitigated disaster.”

“The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is ‘Trump,’” he tweeted.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

The Democrat Caucus is an unmitigated disaster. Nothing works, just like they ran the Country. Remember the 5 Billion Dollar Obamacare Website, that should have cost 2% of that. The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is “Trump”.

6:33 AM - Feb 4, 2020

The Trump campaign also questioned the legitimacy of the contest.

“Democrats are stewing in a caucus mess of their own creation with the sloppiest train wreck in history,” said Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager. “It would be natural for people to doubt the fairness of the process. And these are the people who want to run our entire health care system?”

THE CANDIDATES MOVE ON TO A FULL DAY IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.

While the caucus results remained in limbo early Tuesday, most of the Democratic candidates boarded planes and left the state behind, flying east to New Hampshire to start a new round of campaigning before the Feb. 11 primary there.

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., appears to have the first event of the day — a stop by Riverwalk Cafe in Nashua at 7 a.m. — before going on to a full day of five town hall events around the state.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was also set to campaign in the state on Tuesday morning. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont had events scheduled there through the day as well.

Ms. Warren landed in Manchester shortly after 4 a.m., surrounded by senior aides and top surrogates. In brief remarks to supporters, Ms. Warren said she felt good about her campaign’s position, even as the official results remained unclear.

“When I left Iowa, I said it is too close to call, and it still is — but I feel good,” she said. “We are in 31 states and have thousands of people on the ground.”

Ms. Warren thanked her team in Iowa and said organizers would disperse to other states for what her campaign has said it expects to be a long race. In previous statements, her campaign manager and chief strategist said they believed that Ms. Warren had finished in a closely bunched top three in Iowa, with Mr. Buttigieg and Mr. Sanders.

BUTTIGIEG CLAIMS VICTORY BEFORE RESULTS ARE REPORTED.

Nature may abhor a vacuum, but candidates abhor it more.

And so, in the absence of any official results from the Iowa caucuses, they all tried to frame the vacuum in the best possible light.

Ms. Klobuchar said she knew one thing: “We are punching above our weight.” Mr. Sanders joked about the delay and said he had “a good feeling” that when the results finally arrived, “we’re going to be doing very very well.” Mr. Biden said he was going to leave Iowa with his “share of delegates.” Ms. Warren of Massachusetts said it was “too close to call” but assured her supporters that they were one step closer to beating President Trump.

Then there was Mr. Buttigieg, who decided the vacuum didn’t exist.

“What a night!” he yelled to a mass of cheering supporters late Monday, declaring — with zero percent of precincts officially reporting — that “by all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.”

“Because tonight, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality.”

In truth, that reality was very much deniable.

A Buttigieg aide said that his campaign had received results from 77 percent of its precinct captains, and that those results showed him in position to win the most state delegates.

But this was hardly conclusive: Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign, said he had similar numbers from Mr. Sanders’s precinct captains showing him ahead. And even if the internal results are accurate, results can vary hugely from precinct to precinct, so there is no way to say that 77 percent of the precincts accurately reflect the whole.

“So we don’t know all the results,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “But we know by the time it’s all said and done, Iowa, you have shocked the nation.”

CYBERSECURITY EXPERTS WARN OF PROBLEMS WITH APP.

Christopher C. Krebs, the director of the Homeland Security Department’s cybersecurity agency, said late Monday evening that the mobile app being used in the caucuses had not been vetted or evaluated by the agency.

Cybersecurity experts also said that the app had not been properly tested at scale, and that it was hastily put together over the past two months. Iowa Democratic Party officials only decided to use the app to report results after a previous party proposal — which entailed having caucus participants call in their votes over the phone — was scrapped, on the advice of Democratic National Committee officials.

J. Alex Halderman, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, and David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said Monday night that they had warned state officials that the mobile reporting app was vulnerable to what is known as a “denial of service attack,” in which hackers flood the central servers used to power the app with traffic, stalling them or knocking them offline.

“This app has never been used in any real election or tested at a statewide scale and it’s only been contemplated for use for two months now,” said Mr. Jefferson, who also serves on the board of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization.

“This is an embarrassment but it shouldn’t shake people’s confidence in the results,” Mr. Halderman said. “If this had been an election conducted by phone, or online, that would have been a major disaster. We might never know the results and would have had to re-run the entire contest.”

“This is an urgent reminder,” Mr. Halderman said, “of why online voting is not ready for prime time.”

Mr. Jefferson warned that Nevada is also currently slated to use a similar mobile app to report its caucus results in a few weeks.

Warren: ‘WE ARE BUILT FOR THE LONG HAUL.’

Ms. Warren said the early returns in Iowa showed an appetite for her campaign of “big, structural change,” even as official results were muddled by technical difficulties.

In a rare set of prepared remarks, after being introduced by her grandchildren, Ms. Warren repeated a new refrain: “This campaign is for you.” It was in keeping with her attempts to paint herself as the candidate best suited to unite the Democrats’ moderate and progressive wings.

She acknowledged that the race’s official results were still muddled. “It is too close to call. But I’m just going to tell you what I do know,” she said. “As the baby daughter of a janitor, I’m so glad to be on this stage tonight.”

She then gave the sort of positive speech often given by victorious candidates.

“This race started here in Iowa, but from tomorrow it will run ocean to ocean, east to New Hampshire, and then west to Nevada, then down to South Carolina,” she said. “This fight will stretch across all 57 states and territories that make up this great nation until we unite together as a party in Milwaukee. The road won’t be easy. But we are built for the long haul.”

SANDERS IS FEELING CONFIDENT.

On a frustrating night for every candidate, all of whom were hoping to declare victory quickly and then jet off to New Hampshire, Mr. Sanders tried a bit of humor.

“Let me begin by stating that I imagine — I have a strong feeling — that at some point the results will be announced,” Mr. Sanders told supporters at his election-night watch party. “And when those results are announced, I have a good feeling we’re going to be doing very, very well here in Iowa.”

BIDEN CAMPAIGN COMPLAINS OF ‘CONSIDERABLE FLAWS’ IN THE REPORTING PROCESS.

The Biden campaign sent a letter to the Iowa Democratic Party late Monday night citing “considerable flaws” in the reporting system for the caucuses and seeking information from the party before results are made public.

“The integrity of the process is critical, and there were flaws in the reporting systems tonight that should raise serious concerns for voters,” Kate Bedingfield, a deputy campaign manager for Mr. Biden, said on Twitter.

Addressing supporters, Mr. Biden said he wanted to make sure the state party was “very careful in their deliberations” and added that he expected the results to be “close.”

“We’re going to walk out of here with our share of delegates,” he said. “We don’t know exactly what it is yet, but we feel good about where we are.”

In the letter, the Biden campaign’s general counsel, Dana Remus, wrote that the app to relay results from the caucuses had “failed,” and that the backup telephone reporting system had not work either.

“These acute failures are occurring statewide,” Ms. Remus wrote.

Ms. Remus said that campaigns should get more information from the state party — as well as a chance to respond — before official results are made public.

“We believe that the campaigns deserve full explanations and relevant information regarding the methods of quality control you are employing, and an opportunity to respond, before any official results are released,” she wrote.

KLOBUCHAR: ‘WE ARE PUNCHING ABOVE OUR WEIGHT.’

There may have been no official confirmation of how anyone was doing, Ms. Klobuchar told supporters Monday evening, but she knew she was doing well.

“We know there’s delays,” Ms. Klobuchar said, speaking at the Des Moines Marriott. “But we know one thing — we are punching above our weight.”

“Even in a crowded field of candidates, even during the well-earned impeachment hearing of Donald J. Trump, which had me bolted to my Senate desk for the last two weeks, we kept fighting and you kept fighting for me,” she said. “Somehow, some way, I’m going to get on a plane tonight to New Hampshire, and we are bringing this to New Hampshire.”

‘WHAT’S THE MATH?’ ANDREW YANG ASKS.

“I gotta say, I’m a numbers guy, and we’re still waiting on numbers from tonight,” the former tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang said in a speech to supporters in Des Moines. “We’re all looking around being like, ‘What’s the math?’”

“But the math that I care most about is the fact that this movement has become something that has already shocked the political world,” he added. “And it’s going to keep on going from here — it’s going to keep on growing from here.”

BLOOMBERG LOOKS BEYOND IOWA.

There’s one candidate saying that whatever happens in Iowa tonight does not matter all that much: Mr. Bloomberg.

The former New York mayor spent Monday flying through California, stopping in Sacramento, Fresno and Compton. He shook hands with voters, took a few questions from reporters and plans to get on a plane to Michigan tonight.

Mr. Bloomberg is waging an extremely unconventional campaign, skipping the first four early states entirely and instead focusing on Super Tuesday and beyond.

“I’m a believer that if you want to fight the last war, you believe things like whoever wins Iowa goes all the way,” Mr. Bloomberg said in an interview at a community center in Compton on Monday. “You believe that only six states matter. That was the last election. That’s not true today.”

Early voting officially began Monday in California, and Mr. Bloomberg is urging supporters to cast a ballot for him now. Though Mr. Bloomberg mostly demurred from playing pundit, he stands to gain if the moderates stumble in Iowa.

______

Reporting was contributed by Maggie Astor, Nick Corasaniti, Reid J. Epstein, Trip Gabriel, Shane Goldmacher, Michael Grynbaum, Astead W. Herndon, Thomas Kaplan, Lisa Lerer, Jennifer Medina, Jonathan Martin, Nicole Perlroth and Jeremy W. Peters.

_______

"I’m sick to death of these never ending Iowa caucus stories. Any state that sends the likes of Steve King, Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley to Congress has absolutely no business determining the Democratic candidate. They don’t represent this country and the hype they get is nauseating." NANCY, LAKE Oswego OR

"Just watching the Iowa caucuses on TV. It's the first time I have seen the process live. I did not see one black person in any of the caucuses. Yes, I am African American. And it all seems like backroom dealing is the way it all works. It's not really voting. It's politicking. I don't get it. Even among Whites who vote in the state, so many people apparently cannot participate in these caucuses and are excluded because the time required to caucus makes it prohibitive. Some people attend the caucuses and are so frustrated that they leave when their candidate is excluded because they cannot reach a critical number. Why are the Democrats still using this arcane nearly all white system for its first primary? Folks who care need to push for a very diverse state to be on the same day as, or even before the Iowa caucus. Let's rethink this. Traditions have their place. Traditions that give the power of the first primary to a 95% white electorate where the process is about back-room dealing needs to be scrapped." TONY GLOVER, NY

" I just spent a half hour being attacked by Sanders supporters online for a mildly critical comment about the difficulty of passing socialized medicine. I was accused of being a plant, of being a stooge, and of being a part of a DNC conspiracy. It's as if none of them read or trust anything "the media" says. Who does this remind you of--the non-stop conspiracy theories, the constant attacks from supporters, and the belief that the media is out to get them? I know who it reminds me of, and I know that I will not be voting for Sanders." SUZANNE, NY

"I live in France. People vote on a ballot made of paper. These are collected and counted locally after polls close. Results are transmitted to central offices and, within a few hours, final results are announced. Thank goodness America has a far more hi-tech, sophisticated system." FRANKSTER, PARIS 🇫🇷

"We just watched Klobuchar, Biden and Warren all give speeches thanking their supporters in Iowa. Senator Warren’s supporters were enthusiastic and Senator Klobuchar had her fans as well. Mr. Biden’s crowd was very quiet and we couldn’t see any placards or signs promoting Biden’s candidacy. I asked my husband if he thought it was a room full of journalists - people clapped politely but without enthusiasm. Senator Sanders is speaking as I write, surrounded by HUGE numbers of overjoyed supporters. The corporate media is unified in its determination to prevent Bernie from winning the nomination. If Bernie’s supporters feel cheated by this process, the Democrats will be handing the election to Trump. But maybe that’s the whole point."

ANNIE GRAMSON HILL, MT KISCO, NY

" "Problems with the app". "Quality control". Meaning: no-one stress-tested the app before it went live? I'm sure caucusing worked really well in 1848. It's 2020. Why is Iowa still holding caucuses? Have they not heard of voting and counting ballots? Does this look good? Not by a long shot."

BOB THE BUILDER, NYC

"I grew up in Des Moines. I remember participating in the caucuses when I was 18 (for John Kerry). It was an interesting experience, and it definitely contributed to my interest in politics as I got older. Fast forward 16 years--I now have two little kids. Even though I remain very actively engaged in politics, and have watched every single debate start to finish, I still would not be participating in the caucuses tonight if I still lived in Des Moines. There is a reason the vast majority of Iowa caucus goers are either very young, or very old--its because they have no other commitments (i.e kids, full time jobs, etc) and can easily devote an entire evening to participating in this event. I just can't imagine the results from this being an accurate representation of the voters of Iowa, let alone a projection for the country as a whole. If Iowa wants to continue the caucus, fine, but it should no longer receive the insane media coverage and endless months of obsession and money by the potential candidates." TO THE MAN, CHICAGO

"As a precinct chair, who actually had no problems with the app, the phone lines were jammed by not only those trying to call in results, but also my those trying to get help with the app. That created a mess. I'm also guessing the state party had fewer people answering phones, figuring more people would be using the app, which turned out to be faulty." NANETTE, IOWA CITY

" Yet another example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Democrats are passionate about making sure everything they do is transparent, fair, and representative of the nation's growing diversity. In Iowa, party leaders developed a caucus reporting strategy that, in retrospect exceedingly complicated -- and thus virtually certain to fail. But we should not go overboard in attacking the process. The motivations behind this failed effort were positive, and it is worth noting that it contrasts significantly with official Republican policy, which is to limit voting of minorities, reduce even the opportunity to cast ballots, and try as hard as possible to sabotage the other party (the Democrats) from a fair chance of even competing for voters." PAUL, NC

"Since the caucuses began 50 years ago, Iowa Democrats reported only one number: the delegate count from each of the state’s precincts. But after the razor-close 2016 race in Iowa between Hillary Clinton and Mr. Sanders, Mr. Sanders’s allies pushed the Democratic National Committee to require caucus states to track and report the raw numbers of how many people backed each candidate." So, the guy who isn't a member of the party pushed the Democrats around to get what he wanted, and it's a mess. Do away with caucuses and have primaries where folks vote the same way as in the general election- a much better barometer. And, while we're at it- Iowa is a weird place to start. Lump it in with four or five other, more representative states." TOM, HOLLY SPRINGS NC

*********

[steves-on-a-plane]

The Sentimental Type (Part 9)

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven / Part Eight  / Part Ten / 

Words: 1343 Pairing: Han Solo x Reader Timeline: A New Hope Author’s Note: Just a nice chapter wrapping up the first Death Star battle (And A New Hope.) Sorry this is technically a day late since I had wanted to get this out Wednesday. Anyway hope it was worth the five month long wait! 

Much like Obi Wan’s final lightsaber battle against Darth Vader, the stories that spread around the galaxy about the first Death Star battle were only mostly true. The rebels who survived the attack each went on to tell their own fantastical versions of what happened among the stars that day. You liked to think that you kept your own memories of that time in history mostly objective, but as time moved forward you’d catch yourself telling a white lie here or there.

As far as you could remember, Han, Chewie and you were loading up the last of your supplies. You’d hoped to slip off Yavin 4 while the Empire’s attention was turned to the Rebel X-wings and their pilots. Leia was in the command room with the other Rebel leaders, strategizing. Luke was in his assigned X-wing out in space like a real rebel pilot.

“Huh.” You chuckled handing off the last crate to Han.

“What?” He asked, his eyes surveying the empty hangar.

“It’s just kind of funny. It wasn’t that long ago Luke was some farm boy on Tatooine, now he’s an excitable Rebel pilot.” You explained.

“Attacking that battle station ain’t my idea of courage.” Han shook his head. “It’s more like suicide.”

“You’re gonna feel really stupid someday if they pull this off and Luke turns into some big war hero.” You teased him.

“You’re sure lucky I’m not the jealous type, Sweetheart.” He said. Han draped himself against the frame of the cargo hatch as he was known to do. “Otherwise I’d worried you’re about to leave me for a teenaged war hero.”

“Don’t know which of us you’re trying to fool with that lie. You are exactly the jealous type.” You scoffed. “But, I know there’s no changing your mind once it’s made up. Let’s just get out of here.”

“Chewie? Are we ready to go?” Han yelled into the Falcon, already heading towards the cockpit.

You decided to follow after him, wanting to have one last look at Yavin 4. Even if the Rebels won their fight today, they’d likely move their base of operations somewhere else. You and Han strapped yourselves into your respective seats. The Captain and his Wookie co-pilot immediately got to work flicking switches and turning knobs to get the Millennium Falcon underway. It was an effortless departure from the moon and the Falcon was soon hovering in open space.

“Next stop, Tatooine.” While Han typed in the coordinates for one of your least favorite systems in the galaxy, you watched the Death Star battle through the viewport.

“Wait, is that Luke?” You asked Han and Chewbacca.

“Where?” Han asked, looking up from the navicomputer. You detangled yourself from your harness, to stand between Han and Chewie. “There, the X-wing being tracked by three Tie Fighters.”

“It could be, it’s from the red squadron.” Han agreed.  

“We should help him.” You insisted. Han looked away from the viewport to stare at you, almost like he thought you were joking. After a second, he smirked.

“We wouldn’t want anything to happen to your favorite farm boy.” He teased you.

“Joke all you want, it’s the right thing to do. Right, Chewie?” The Wookie offered you a low growl of encouragement. “See, the Wookie agrees.”

“Alright, hang on tight.” Han tugged your waist so that you fell into his lap. You wrapped your arms around his neck and tried to stay out of his way of operating the controls. The Millenium Falcon swooped towards the Death Star. Han easily neutralized two of the Tie Fighters that were tailing Luke. The third was sent spiraling off into space.

“You’re all clear kid!” Han declared, patching into the rebel comchannel. “Now let’s blow this thing and go home.” Han pulled up hard on the yolk of the Falcon and headed back for Yavin 4. It wasn’t long before the remaining X-wings were following behind. The Death Star exploded spectacularly, sending fragments of the battle station through the black void of space. “Great shot kid! That was one in a million!” Han called excitedly to Luke.

“We did it!” He said, cradling you close to his chest. “I can’t believe we did it.”

“And to think you wanted to go back to Tatooine.” You laughed.

“Chewie, take the controls, [Y/N] and I will be right back.” Han ordered. He got to his feet, still holding you in his arms. Chewbacca roared something as you and Han left the cockpit.

“What did he say?” You asked.

“You don’t want to know.” Han said, nuzzling your neck with your nose.

“Does this mean that you’re not mad at me for wanting to help Luke?” You asked.

“Do you want to keep talking about Luke, or do you want celebrate our victory?” He started kissing your neck.

“Han, I don’t think we have enough time for that.” You giggled.

“Sure we do. It’ll take us at least twenty minutes to re-enter the moon’s atmosphere.” Han continued to carry you off towards the Captain’s quarters.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Like Han predicted, you had just enough time to finish your…activity in the Captain’s Quarters before the Falcon had re-entered the moon’s atmosphere. Chewbacca effortlessly landed her safe inside the rebel base and was soon growling for you two to join him in disembarking the vessel. The rebel base that you re-entered felt entirely different than the one you’d left. The X-wing pilots were only beginning to arrive back, and the rebels were greeting everyone with cheers and exclamations of celebration.

“[Y/N], Han!” Leia came bounding  over with a proud grin on her face. “And Chewbacca of course.” She nodded at the Wookie before enveloping you and Han into a hug. “We couldn’t have done it without you!”

“Boy don’t we know it.” Han smirked.

“Whatever made you change your mind, I’m glad the Force was on our side today.” Leia continued to smile. “I’ve got to greet the other pilots, but we’ll talk again soon.” Soon Leia disappeared into the crowd of reveling rebels.

“What did make you change your mind?” You asked Han, looking up at him.

“We’ve managed to avoid Jabba this long.” Han shrugged. “I figured maybe we could stay a little longer.

“Han!” Luke was fighting to make his way through the crowd towards you three. “Boy you really saved my neck out there.”

“Well, you’ll get me back next time, I’m sure.” Han played the situation off casually. You knew him well enough to know that it was only a matter of time before he started bragging about how he helped blow up the Death Star. It’d be the Kessel Run all over again. You and Chewbacca would never hear the end of it.

“Besides,” Han continued. “[Y/N]’s the one you gotta thank. She’s the one who talked me into going back for ya.”

“Wow, then I guess I owe you too, [Y/N]!” Luke smiled.

“I was just doing the right thing, Luke. It’s what Ben, uh, Obi Wan would have wanted.” You told him.

“So, does this mean you’re gonna stick around for a while?” Luke asked you. He wouldn’t look at Han, probably too afraid to hear the bad news from the Captain himself.

“Yeah, I guess it does.” You nodded.

“That’s great news!” Luke pulled you into a tight hug of his own. His grip was slightly more vice like than Leia’s but you went with it. You’d never been hugged so much in your adult life before. “Sorry.” The farm boy apologized as he released you. “I’m just excited that’s all.”

“It’s alright, Luke. That was one hell of a fight you put up out there. You should be proud.” You told him.

“Aww it wasn’t much. I would have been toast if it weren’t for you guys in the Millennium Falcon. Say I’m gonna go check on R2, he took a few good hits when we were out there.” Luke said his goodbyes before running off again.

“Admit it.” You elbowed Han. “You like them too.”

“I like you.” Han said before kissing you.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Tags: @dechartduo @rainbowzephyr @sherlockspie @mybrilliantusername@wishuponawriter @fandomloverlord221

[astudyinsarcasm9]

Avengers: Endgame (2019) -  Review - Spoilers Ahead

Later edit: I saw the movie again and Thanos says he destroyed the stones using the stones. First things first: Imma put a ”keep reading” below just in case someone stumbles upon this review and hasn’t seen the movie yet. 

I was gonna wait until I saw it a second time, as I did with Infinity War, but because I am sick with a cold and low on money I am just gonna gather all my opinions and feelings about the movie and just get it over with. 

Off the bat I have to say that I have been looking forward to this movie for a year (everyone has been), and while the constant news about it started to become quite annoying the hype was still there. So, naturally I went to see it as soon as it premiered in my country. 

If i were to compare this to Infinity War, which, again, most people do, I’d say that Infinity War is more consistent when it comes to its plot and the rules it establishes or has established before in other MCU movies. BUT Endgame just feels like it has more stakes, that it is not as predictable as the first one. I mean, come on, we all knew part of our heroes were gonna be dusted and we knew they were gonna come back because it happens in the comics as well. Obviously they wouldn’t have killed a big character in IW because they needed them for Endgame. As such we were left with the OG Avengers plus a couple of other supporting cast members.  I feel as if even though Endgame was, in part predictable, its stakes were higher. We knew they’d find a way to reverse the snap we just didn’t know how. We speculated it would be time travel months ago but again we weren’t sure how that’d go. 

And while I appreciate that they tried to establish some rules prior to the time travel I feel that as soon as it was convenient they threw them out the window, more or less.  More on that later. 

What I liked about this movie?

I confess: I wanted the movie to start with this scene above. No music, no nothing just this scene that we also saw in the trailer. It just conveys so well how Infinity War ended, how our heroes feel. It’s tragic, no shred of hope. And yeah the trailers spoiled it because they also showed Tony back on Earth ( which I hated) it still would’ve been nice to start with this but I admit the scene with Clint and his family was heartbreaking but not surprising. 

Ok so what did I like in Endgame?

Cap’s determination to move forward, his willingness to help others do so and adapt to the new world post snap. it really shows the core qualities of Cap and why Steve is truly worthy to be Cap. 

I really liked Ant Man, Paul Rudd is just a delight to watch. I loved all of his reactions and I feel like he mirrored the audience pretty well. I mean he is a hero in his own right yet he is still an outsider reacting to everything around him and to the other more well known characters. 

The way the movie brought many things full-circle, it was like an ongoing thing. Staring with Thor killing Thanos and saying that this time he aimed for the head to Tony ending 11 years of MCU with the same line that he started it. 

Black Widow - she is not really one of my favourites. There’s nothing wrong with her it’s just I couldn’t invest in her as a character, but that’s a me problem not a problem with the character as is. But in this movie Black Widow was amazing and not because of the sacrifice she made but because she endured and basically took on Nick Fury’s mantle, so to speak, and tried to guide everyone and be that shinning light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Also, her friendship with Clint is amazing and I love that throughout all of the MCU the writers did not feel compelled to make them have a romantic relationship. There are other types of relationships in this world and I am glad Marvel understands that and showed us how beautiful her and Clint’s relationship is and how she supports him and loves him and vice versa. 

Everything with Rocket is amazing because he is amazing. 

I liked how they used time travel to give a nod to a lot of Marvel Movies, kinda paying homage to what was before while at the same time showing where we are now and how far our characters have evolved since this whole MCU started. It was beautifully done. And yes Tony talking to his father was nothing out of the ordinary, in terms of dialogue, the moment was heartfelt and it really caught me off guard. Steve seeing Peggy was a nice touch too even though we know it was there to kind of explain the ending but more on that later. 

Clint being badass. He is one of my favourite MCU characters.

The fact that Thor had a panic attack and pretty much got depressed after the events of Infinity War. I know many consider his character development that he got during Ragnarok was ruined, but I think what happened to him was a normal response. Think about it: Thor was the closest to killing Thanos, and because he aimed for the chest Thanos snapped his fingers. It was a matter of seconds. Thanos even teases him about it in IW. ANYONE in Thor’s shoes would feel like crap, like a failure because to him it feels like the faith of everyone who got dusted was in his hands and he was sloppy and missed and so because of him half of everyone on the planet disappeared. It didn’t matter that it was a team effort to try to bring Thanos down. The fact that in the last seconds before the snap it was just Thor and Thanos looking at each other with the latter teasing the former about not aiming right was enough for Thor to send him into depression. We could still see that it is the same Thor from Ragnarok but Thor lost so much and bottled up so many emotions that it was only natural that he’đ either have a full outburst of anger, wich he did in Infinity War or go into depression, which he also did in Endgame. So, yeah, in my opinion Thor was written pretty good. Ok, the fat jokes were kinda on the nose, but it did give us one of the best jokes in the movie when Tony called him Lebowski.

The final battle was freaking amazing even though I wanted Doctor Strange to have more screen time, but I guess he had his time in IW. Yet the moment he raised his finger and looked at Tony to let him know that was the one chance where they win was heartbreaking and utterly beautiful. Like this is it no screwing up. Now or never. 

CAPTAIN AMERICA WIELDING FREAKING MJOLNIR!

What I didn’t like or had doubts about: 

When Thanos mentioned that he destroyed the Infinity stones he said that they were basically atoms at the point when the Avengers came to fight him about it on the farm planet. If I remember correctly 2 or 3 days passed between the snap and them going on the farm planet after Thanos so I really wanted the avengers to try and have Scott go into the quantum realm to have him reassemble the stones at an atom level. It would have been harder, sure, but it was an option. wasn’t it?I guess it could have taken longer. 

I think it was already established in prior movies that the Gauntlet was the only item that could hold the infinity stones and harness their power. To me it was a bit off how Tony was able to make his own gauntlet, just because. It would have been a little bit better if they used the original gauntlet. It was still cool to see yet it took me out of the moment for a split second. 

Steve’s ending. Thematically I don’t think it works. Now, don’t get me wrong I want Steve to be happy but we’ve spend so many movies establishing that Steve was, at least, partially ok with the fact that he couldn’t go back to his own time. Sure he hold on to Peggy and what she meant to him but he accepted that he had a duty, that he couldn’t live a normal life even if he wanted to and in Endgame he even was the one to urge people to move on in the post snap world. Steve is a selfless, kind person and he couldn’t and wouldn’t sit on the sidelines while others suffer. It’s just not him. He also kinda fucked up the timeline. As far as I understood (feel free to correct me on this) because he returned the stones to their original locations the timeline stayed the same, it didn’t branch like the Ancient One said it would if even one stone would be removed. So, that means that the Peggy he went back to is the Peggy from the main timeline but we were told they can’t change the past so how can he go back and be with her if it is the main timeline while also doing what he did post coming out of the ice? It boggles my mind. But putting that aside, it’s just not Steve. His whole ark was moving on. And sure when he went to the 70s with Tony he saw Peggy and maybe thought to himself that there was a chance to be with her BUT our Steve, present Steve is not the same with the one who just came out of the ice 70 years ago. Yes he’d long for and miss her and want to go back but ultimately he wouldn’t because he moved on. He had a reunion with Peggy when she was old and it was bittersweet but he had closure, in a sense. 

The fact that he passed on his shield to Falcon. I know that is what happens in the comics but here we are talking about the MCU and in the MCU it does not make sense. Falcon had no ark in these movies (if I am not mistaken), and he does not have any powers of his own. He is just a guy with wings. in the comics he has powers so it makes sense to take on the mantle of Cap. In the MCU giving him the shield doesn’t mean added powers as well. Having a black captain america is an amazing concept and i’m 100% for it just not Falcon. 

I found it hilarious yet awful how Banner first said that time travel is not his area of expertise only to have him later on explaining time travel to everyone. Like, you could have made Tony do it after he came back and cracked time travel. I get Banner could know some stuff but if you establish he doesn’t know then he doesn’t know. 

While the CGi on Hulk was great for me it looked like uncanny valley for some reason. I know Professor Hulk is a thing in the comics but it looked so awkward and weird and it showed how the writers had no idea what to do with him like that. Banner shined when he was in his astral projection form while talking with the Ancient One but looked awkward for the rest of the movie. 

Captain Marvel - yeah she had the cool cool scene at the end which I loved but I dislike her character a lot. 

The plot point with Nebula being the means Thanos finds out about time travelling. 

The joke at the end with Thor and Star Lord dragged on for so long and it really wasn’t funny. Except the Asgardians of the Galaxy part, that was hilarious. 

Questions I had: 

How did Steve return the soul stone? 

If past Gamora came to the future and assuming it was the same timeline why couldn’t they go and grab Black Widow? Sure it would cheapen her sacrifice and I don’t want that to happen but it is a question that you have to wonder about. 

Nebula kills her past self…and nothing happens? I mean I know Hulk said your past becomes your future and all that but it doesn’t make sense however you look at it. Except if that Nebula was from a different branch, a different reality. 

If past Thanos came into the future and got killed there does that mean that the snap does not happen, assuming it is the same timeline? and if it’s not then does that mean there’s a timeline out there where the snap outright didn’t happen? 

How did Thanos destroy the Infinity stones in the first place? He is the most powerful being in the MCU so far but you gotta wonder how did he accomplish such a thing.

The movie was incredibly enjoyable, it didn’t feel like 3 hours at all. It was darker than Infinity War but less solid than the former. At least in my opinion. It is truly emotional to see all of the MCU movies leading up to these 2 which are by all means masterpieces of the genre. I mean sure they have flaws but we’ve got to admit they did raise the bar a lot. Many of the MCU movies did. Some titles were bland, sure but most were not. 

I’d give this movie a 9,5 out 10 which is almost perfect in my book. It was a perfect conclusion, all the time travel shenanigans and plot holes aside. 

[crowkingwrites]

Stay Close

Pairing: Ramsay Bolton X Reader

Fic Request:  Can you write ReaderxRamsay they're friends with benefits with only one rule 'When one of them want it to be over - it's over'. Ramsay never was the one to follow the rules tho. Can you make it angsty but with happy end?

Author’s Notes: This came out a lot longer than i intended to. Oops. I’m feeling angsty anyways sooo... music helped out this fic. Please give it a listen.

Ocean & Keep it Close both by Seven Lions

Words: 3498

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14628660

Ramsay watched on as you held hands with another. His eye twitched. His fingers itched at his sides to hurt someone. His glare could be felt by the hairs on the back of your neck. You were smiling, but as soon as you felt the chill your head turned. You saw him seething at you.

But that was the deal. It was over. That was the rules.

Months earlier, Ramsay found you at a sketchy frat party. You were drunk and in no shape to consent to anything. A frat boy tried to move you and take you somewhere private, but Ramsay got to you first. He glared at the frat boy and took you away himself.

Somewhere on the road, you woke up in Ramsay’s car. He was driving on a dark highway. The cool late night made you shiver as you sat up. You opened your mouth with every intention to ask where he was taking you, but he beat you to the punch.

“There’s a diner at the next exit. You need to sober up,” he said flatly.

“I don’t need to do anything. You’re not the boss of me,” you said as-a-matter-of-factly. Ramsay tsked.

“You were almost unconscious. There was a guy who looked suspicious.”

“And what? You saved me?” you scolded him. “This is just like high school. You know that? I knew I wasn’t gonna get rid of you after graduation. All of my friends told me. I remember. ‘Ramsay won’t follow you after this. He won’t ever leave this god awful place.’ But guess what? You’re here.”

“I am,” Ramsay pulled into the diner parking lot. Two of the five neon letters didn’t work, so it read ‘DIN’ instead of ‘DINER’. The overworked waitress sat you and Ramsay by a window. You could see how it was, and how bright the lights were. You had a slight headache from it, but nothing you couldn’t handle. Ramsay pushed forward the coffee and you sipped at it.

“You have to stop,” you told him. “You’ve been doing this for years. What are you exactly getting out of this?”

“Drink the coffee,” Ramsay ordered.

“No, answer my question. Seriously, what are you getting out of this? I’m not your girlfriend. We’re not friends. I was nice to you once sophomore year, and you followed me to a different state.” “I got your attention now, don’t I?”

“By stalking me.”

“By being loyal to you,” Ramsay argued. “I haven’t dated anyone else.”

“I wouldn’t care if you did,” you said coldly. “I don’t care about you. I never have. For four years, you’ve been delusional.”

“Have I?” Ramsay whipped out his phone and called you. Your phone screen lit up with Ramsay’s picture and name. “See you still haven’t blocked my number. Just like you haven’t blocked me from Facebook or Instagram. But I still stalk you, right?”

You glared at him. “What do you want from me?”

“What I’ve always wanted,” Ramsay leaned forward. His fingers itching to touch yours. You stared at his fingers and looked away. You knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted the same thing for the past four years. You knew you didn’t feel the same.

For a kid whose father was in the military, Ramsay didn’t have much respect for authority. He had been trouble for most teachers, and a nightmare for your peers. Ramsay was a bully. He and his pack of ‘friends’ picked on, beat up, and hurt anyone who even so much looked at them wrong. It was hard to have feelings for anyone who beat someone to the ground for fun.

But this wasn’t high school anymore. You moved out of state for college, hoping to start anew, but Ramsay followed like you predicted. He always followed you around, stalked your social media, and sent you late night messages that would often go unnoticed.

“Ramsay, you should just give up,” you told him. You were tired of him. Ramsay blinked and shook his head.

“No, I’m not doing that,” Ramsay said, chewing on the eggs on his plate. “I didn’t come all the way out here for you to tell me no.” You put your face in your hands. College hadn’t been that easy to handle. Your part time job made you mildly depressed, and you missed your friends back at home. In truth, you only went to the frat party to make friends, but it seems things got out of hand. An idea sparked in your head, a stupid idea, but an idea nonetheless.

“What if,” you started. “We started a friends-with-benefits type deal?”

“I’m listening,” Ramsay said in between bites.

“No relationship. No feelings. Just sex. When one of us wants it to be over, its over, understand?” you said. Ramsay nodded, wiping off a chunk of eggs from the corner of his mouth. He had a slight smile, but he did his best to hide it from you.

The next thing you knew you were on top of Ramsay and heat was building up between the both of you. His hands held your hips gently, and his eyes never left your face. He wanted to look at you move and moan on top of him. It felt good. It was distracting from everything that was going wrong. You felt your end coming soon, and you rode the orgasm out of him rough which triggered him.

The next few weeks were the same. You would go to work, roll your eyes at people who couldn’t understand why they needed a receipt for a return, and then go to classes. Some late nights you would feel lonely again, and you texted Ramsay. Ramsay fucked you and the loneliness would go away. After you stuck around for an hour or two, and then you went back to sleep in your own room. It was routine.

One Friday afternoon, Ramsay showed off his stash, asking you if you wanted to try it. You had a rough week. After getting fired over a customer complaint and failing an important history exam, you shrugged and agreed. Maybe medicating with marijuana would help.

“So what happened?” Ramsay asked lighting up the blunt.

“A regular customer claimed I had been rude and unhelpful,” you flatly said. “I just think the manager wanted to get rid of me. It’s not fair.” You took the blunt from Ramsay and inhaled. The back of your throat burned and you coughed heavily. Ramsay chuckled at the sight, but then helped you breathe by gesturing you to lift your arms above your head. He noticed your face.

“Are you okay?”

You shook your head. “No, I’m not.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Ramsay shifted next to you, sitting on the ground. The smoke from the blunt wafted through the air. You thought about your grades, what you were gonna do for money, and making friends seemed to prove harder than you thought.

“This is hard,” you said. Your chest felt heavy. “I didn’t think it was going to be this hard. I thought it was going to be easier than this. I mean, high school—

“Was so easy,” Ramsay completed your thought. He passed the blunt to you. “Of course it was, Captain of the cheerleading squad and Prom Queen.” You shook your head.

“I wasn’t Prom Queen,” you corrected him. “That was my best friend.”

“You deserved it more,” Ramsay said.

“Does it really matter though? Does anything about high school matter? I don’t know. I feel like I’m failing,” you felt Ramsay reach for your hand, but you pulled away.

“My place is hiring. I could put in a good word,” Ramsay offered. If there was one positive thing about Ramsay, it was that he was a man of his word. He did put in that good word for you, and you began working at a doggy dare care center. You’ve never felt happier. Instead of dealing with people screaming in your face, you had older dogs and puppies kiss your face. Most of your day was spent walking, cleaning, and caring for your four-legged guests.

“Y/N? Right?” a guy your age came up to you. His hair was in dark curls, and his smile was genuine.

“Yeah, and you are?” you asked, picking up a colorful leash for Lula, a young Rottweiler.

“Damon,” he smiled and shook your hand. “So you’re friends with Ramsay?” You chuckled. It had been two months now since you agreed to be friends with benefits with him and last night he ate you out like a feast.

“You could say that,” you gave him an awkward smile.

“I’ve honestly never met anyone else whose friends with him,” Damon said.

“You’re friends with him?”

“Yeah, I know. It’s hard to believe. He’s hard to get along with.”

“You’re telling me,” you said somewhat relieved you had someone to finally relate to. Damon and you became quick friends. Both of you worked similar shifts, so Damon and you worked well with one another. Where you would start something, he would finish it. And vice versa. Both of you started talking about music and movies, but you couldn’t stop talking about one particular subject.

“So, let me get this straight,” Damon started while enjoying lunch with you. “Elsa and Anna’s parents survived the ship wreck and landed in the jungle only to become Tarzan’s parents?”

“Yes.”

“That’s fucking brilliant,” Damon chewed his sandwich and gestured to you. Ramsay walked into the breakroom and set his things down. He tugged one earphone out of his ear. Damon smirked at him. “You’re late. What’s your excuse this time?”

“Shut up,” Ramsay snapped. You noticed the glare he shot Damon. Something was off. Before you could say anything, your manager walked in to find Ramsay.

“Where were you?” he asked, crossing his arms.

“I was coming here, I swear to God,” Ramsay glared at the manager. You hated admitting it to yourself, but you loved watching Ramsay get angry at others. Something in you loved his aggressiveness.

“Yeah?” “Yeah, I was,” Ramsay continued. “Why do you think I’m such a flake? I love these dogs. I really like this job. I don’t have to deal with people except you.”

“You need an attitude adjustment. You don’t get along with anyone,” your manager berated. He pointed to you and Damon. “You need to be more like these two. Not only do they come in every day with a great attitude and get work done, but they’re peas in a pod. They’re like work spouses.” The words hit Ramsay harder than he anticipated. He narrowed his eyes at his manager.

“Maybe you should marry them then,” he spat out.

“I know I wouldn’t mind. I bet Y/N would make a great wife,” Damon winked at you. You almost laughed. Ramsay and your manager looked on. Damon apologized. “Sorry, just thought I should break the tension.”

“Could both of you leave?” your manager asked. “I need to speak with this one alone.” Damon took your arm and guided you out of the room. You swore you saw Ramsay’s hurt expression seeing you leave with him. Damon started laughing as soon as the door closed.

“Did you see that? He’s so fucked!”

“You don’t think he’ll get fired?” you said concerned looking back at the break room. Damon shrugged it off.

“He’s fine,” Damon looked to you and smiled. “So what do you think? Do you wanna be my work wife?” He wiggled his eyebrows. You laughed and playfully hit him.

“Come on,” you reacted.

“I’m serious!” Damon looked into your eyes, keeping eye contact with you. “Maybe you and I could hang out sometime?”

“Like at Porchey’s? We could get Rams—

Damon touched your arm. “I mean just us. You and me. Maybe we could watch some Disney movies and have some pizza. Does that sound okay?” You blinked. Damon was asking you out. He had been so nice and so much fun to be around. You often forgot about your negative thoughts when you were with him. You didn’t realize he genuinely liked you.

“Okay,” you said. “Yeah, that sounds like a good time.”

“What sounds like a good time?” Ramsay asked, exiting the room. He sniffed and side-glanced your manager who went the opposite direction.

“It’s nothing,” you quickly said.

“Nothing?” Damon scoffed. “Our date doesn’t mean anything to you?” He play pouted.

“Date?” Ramsay’s voice almost squeaked. You never heard him squeak. “You guys are going on a date?”

“Yeah, it’s just a chill one,” Damon’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it. “I’ll catch you guys later. See you tomorrow?” Damon winked at you again before he left. You turned back to Ramsay who now glared at you.

“A date? Really?” Ramsay crossed his arms.

“I’m not allowed to date?”

“No. Not him.”

“Not him? Are you kidding me? Now you want to control who I see?” you started to raise your voice. “That’s not how this works, Ramsay.”

“Do you think I give a fuck about how this works?” he snapped back at you. “You’re mine.” You stepped back. You felt the back of your eyes burning. After all this time, he was still under the delusion that you two were actually together.

“We’re done,” you told him, pushing past him into the breakroom. Ramsay followed.

“What?” he raised his voice.

“You heard me,” you snatched your purse and jacket. “It’s over. We’re done doing this.” You pushed past Ramsay’s chest.

“Y/N! Come back here!” Ramsay yelled at you, but you kept going. “We’re not done! You can’t say that!” Ramsay kept yelling more, but you couldn’t hear him from your car. You watched him come outside. You turned the ignition and drove off. You watched Ramsay from your rear view mirror. You weren’t his. You didn’t belong to him.

You thought about how fucked you almost every night. You thought about how he held you when you cried and cried. You thought about his words when you felt like you lost everything. You remembered them when he held you tight and told you that you weren’t a failure.

“I got you,” he would say. “I’m here.”

“Y/N?” Damon called out to you. You snapped out of the memory. Damon reached for your hand and held it. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,’ you nodded. “Just thinking about stuff.”

“You’ve been weird today. Is it the depression? You can tell me,” Damon said quietly to you. He didn’t want your friends to hear. He knew you couldn’t admit it to anyone just yet. You shook your head. Damon was only trying to help. It had been three weeks since the Disney date. Damon and you hit it off immediately. Unlike Ramsay, Damon made you genuinely happy. He was understanding, supportive, and a really good kisser.

“No, I’m fine,” you half-smiled. “Just having a weird day.” Damon nodded and rubbed his thumb over your knuckles.

“So, we’re on for karaoke tonight, guys?” Damon posed the question to your mutual friends. A lot of them nodded and agreed. Damon turned to you. “Personally, I can’t wait to sing a certain song with a certain someone.”

You smiled remembering how Damon sang ‘A Whole New World’ with you on your Disney date, and then just after the song finished both of you shared your first kiss.

“Hakuna Matata, right brother?” Damon quickly turned to Jack and high fived him. You snorted, realizing he didn’t mean you at all. Then you felt his eyes. You turned around to see Ramsay glaring at you. He was seething.

But that was the deal. It was over. That was the rules.

Later that night, Damon dropped you off at your dorm. He kissed you good night and drove off. You checked in and took the elevator with no problem. You weren’t drunk. After building up an alcohol tolerance from being lonely and depressed, you were pretty balanced when it came to drinking.

You searched your purse for your dorm room keys when you looked up to see Ramsay waiting by your door. He hadn’t spoken to you in weeks. He avoided you at work. He didn’t even bother to send a single message. You felt your stomach, and you quickly searched your bag for the damned keys. Once you grabbed them, you tried to avoid Ramsay as you turned the key in the door.

“Can we talk?” he asked you.

“Now you want to talk? Of course you would because this whole world revolves around you and what you want right?” you snapped at him. He grabbed your arm.

“I’m not asking again,” Ramsay said.

“You don’t have to ask again. You don’t even have to talk to me again,” you turned away from him. Your eyes started to burn again. It hurt even talking to him.

“Please Y/N,” Ramsay tightened his grip on you. “Don’t go in there. Just talk to me. Please.” Ramsay never told anyone ‘please’, he just did what he wanted. You glanced at his eyes. They were dilated when they looked at you. You closed the door, and you followed him outside. The air was cool and the air was still. Awkward was the first thought you had when you stood next to him in silence. Ramsay inhaled his cigarette and exhaled. Smoke left his mouth slowly.

“Why him?” Ramsay asked first.

“He makes me happy,” you answered in short.

“Didn’t I make you happy? What about all the times I held you? When I was there for you?”

“You did, but—

“But what?” Ramsay started to explode. “He’s my fucking best friend. He’s the only person that makes me feel normal.”

“Exactly,” you snapped back. “Damon genuinely likes me. You’ve held me on a pedestal for years. You’ve treated me as if I’m the most perfect thing to ever happen on Earth.”

“Because you are!” Ramsay screamed. “You don’t even remember that time do you? You and your friends always think it was such a small thing. That day you were nice to me. They told you not to. I remember that. They said to not do anything because I was such an asshole. But you did anyways. I was having the fucking worst month of my life.

“It was Valentine’s Day. You were handing out baked goods to people who looked lonely and sad which was nice of you to even fucking do. And you stopped me and gave me a cupcake with pink frosting on top. It had a stupid plastic ring on top. You smiled at me and wished me ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’. It was so simple, but it meant the world to me.” You let the tears fall on your face.

“And then you followed me and stalked me.”

“Yeah, you know what? I did. I was obsessed with you,” Ramsay inhaled his cigarette again. “I’m a sick fucker. I’ve fantasized and done some weird shit, but I hoped that this would turn into something.”

“What exactly did you expect?”

“I just,” Ramsay sighed, letting the smoke leave his mouth. “I didn’t want you to fall in love with my best friend. Was that too much to ask?” You felt your stomach turn. You weren’t in love with Damon. You liked him, but you weren’t in love with him. You reached for Ramsay’s hand.

“I’m not in love with Damon,” you told Ramsay. Your fingers entangled with his. Friends with benefits didn’t hold hands. Not like this. Ramsay tapped his foot.

“Don’t play with me. Don’t do this to me.”

“I’m not,” you said. “There’s a reason I gave you that cupcake that day, you know. Everyone gave you such a bad time. Everyone thought you were an awful person who would never change. I gave you that cupcake because I thought you deserved better.” Ramsay squeezed your hand hard. You watched smoke leave his mouth again. He started shaking.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not,” you closed in the space between you. “You do deserve better.” Ramsay closed in the space between you and kissed you. You felt a whirl of emotions inside. You felt relief and joy rise into your head, but you also felt your stomach drop. Ramsay’s fingers caressed your neck and he deepened the kiss. You separated from him, realizing how you felt.

Surprisingly enough, Damon took the break up very well. He’d hoped both of you could stay friends, and hoped more that there wouldn’t be any hate between the both of you. You still considered him to be your work husband even though your new boyfriend couldn’t stand the nicknames.

Ramsay and you sat in his room late at night, watching a true crime documentary on Netflix. The summer rain pitter-pattered against the window. Thunder rolled while Ramsay wrapped a large blanket around both of you. He nuzzled you close.

“Promise me something?” you said out of the blue.

“Anything,” his mouth next to your ear.

“Stay close to me?”

“Always.”

Taglist: @angelicshinigami @sugarwastaken @carilov09 @disneyprincessbuffyannesummers @i-theredqueen @sleepylunarwolf

[ravenqueensspecialboi]

Monochromatic

DaiSuga Week Day One: Habits or Soulmates Rating: G Summary: The first time you see color, Daichi had been told, you know you've found your soulmate. That was the story that Daichi had been told his whole life. One minute everything's monochrome, the next… People would usually trail off at that point, lost in their own little worlds as they romanticized about finding their one true connection.When Daichi met Sugawara, nothing happened. Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15749997

Fic under the cut!

The first time you see color, Daichi had been told, you know you've found your soulmate.  That was the story that Daichi had been told his whole life. One minute everything's monochrome, the next… People would usually trail off at that point, lost in their own little worlds as they romanticized about finding their one true connection. Daichi, ever the practical child, would often ask the Skeptic's Questions—what if you never find your soulmate? What if you find your soulmate, but you aren't completely compatible?  What if your soulmate's a jerk?  What if your soulmate isn't a jerk, but just wants to be friends?  He had heard rumors of people lying about their ability to see colors, either to be with or to break up with someone.  His concerns were always brushed aside with a definitive, "You'll understand once you find your soulmate".  It wasn't an answer that Daichi liked, but it was one he got a lot, so he learned to begrudgingly accept it.

Despite his reservations, Daichi was excited at the possibility of meeting his soulmate.  It was nice to think about; seeing color with someone you were meant to be with for the rest of your life.  To finally see beyond the black and white of a soulmate-less life.  He would daydream about his unknown soulmate, what they looked like, when they would meet. It was something nice to look forward to, not that Daichi would admit it out loud.

***

When Daichi met Sugawara, nothing happened.  Well, something happened.  That Asahi kid stumbled over his words something awful and Sugawara had laughed.  A cute, quiet snicker that made Daichi's stomach do a little flip, but there was no explosion of color.  Sugawara was definitely not Daichi's soulmate then; he was cute, but not Daichi's soulmate. No one on the Karasuno volleyball team was.   Daichi didn't suddenly start seeing color the moment he walked into the gym, despite his grandmother predicting for the hundredth time that he would.  It didn't bother Daichi too much.  He knew that only a handful of people met their soulmate before graduating high school.  He had time. Besides, he was here for volleyball, not finding a soulmate.

The first day of practice went by quick.  The older team members didn't seem all that interested in practice, but Daichi, Sugawara, and Asahi did their best to pick up the slack.  At the end of practice, Asahi left with barely a head nod in Daichi's direction, leaving Daichi alone with Suga.

"So, your name's Sawamura?" Sugawara asked as they left the gym.

"Sawamura Daichi, yeah. My friends call me Daichi."

"Daichi, huh?" Sugawara mused.  "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too, Sugawara."

Sugawara grinned, bumping Daichi's shoulder with his own.  "Suga's fine."

Daichi returned the smile, "Suga it is."

***

"I wonder what your hair color is," Suga murmured one day, staring absentmindedly at Daichi's head.  The pair had been working on homework at Daichi's place in silence.  Suga's question was the first time either had spoken in a while.

Daichi could feel his face heat up.  "I mean, my guess is black?  That's what my grandmother says it is."

"So your grandmother can see colors?" Suga asked.

"Yeah, she and my grandpa met when they were kids.  Saw color instantly, got married in their twenties."

Suga let out a whistle, "They really had that fairytale thing going on, huh?"

"I guess so."

The two continued their work, silence falling once more.  After a few more minutes, Suga spoke up again.

"How about your parents?  Do they see colors?"

"Yup.  Dad likes to fawn over Mom's eyes.  Says they're these two perfect spheres of perfect ink that he could drown in for the rest of his life."

"Your dad should be a poet."

Daichi snorted, "He teaches poetry at Tohoku University, so…"

Suga let out a laugh of his own, crinkling his nose in a way that was entirely too cute.

"Fair enough."

***

"What about your parents, do they see colors?"

Suga—who had been practicing his sets, but turned to look at Daichi instead—opened his mouth to reply as the ball dropped on his head.  Daichi gave a sympathetic wince as Suga cursed and rubbed his head.

"What was that?" Suga asked.

"The last time we talked about colors," Daichi explained, "you asked me about my parents, but I never asked you about your parents."

Suga gave Daichi a shrug, "I dunno.  I don't think so.  They got divorced years ago, but Mom never talks about what her relationship with Dad was like."

"I see," Daichi murmured as Suga walked away to grab the ball.

"Do you see colors?" Suga asked.

Daichi shook his head, "No, I don't.  But I'd like to."

Suga nodded, studying the ball.  Daichi didn't like the weird gleam that Suga had in his eyes as he turned back to Daichi.

"Got anything for the short term, then?  You know, while you wait?"

"While I wait?" Daichi repeated.

"Yeah!"

"Suga, what does that even mean?"

Suga gave Daichi a shrug, "You know, while you wait for that pop of color.  What about Michimiya?  She seems nice."

"What?  No!  No," Daichi spluttered.  "Michimiya and I have known each other for years.  She's like my sister."

"'Like' being the operative word here."

"Suga."

"What?"

Daichi shook his head.  "I'm not really looking for anyone right now.  No crushes, no short term, no nothing.  Call me a romantic, but I kind of want what the rest of my family's had, you know?"

Suga gave Daichi a nod, turning back to his setting practice.  He wasn't sure if it was just his imagination, but Daichi could have sworn Suga looked disappointed.  And that he could have seen the color of Suga's eyes for the briefest of moments.

***

The loss to Dateko had been hard, but no one was taking it harder than Asahi, Nishonoya, and Suga.  They both blamed themselves for the loss, but the truth of the matter was that Dateko was the better team.  They had played better, it made sense to Daichi that they had won.  That didn't negate the fact that it hurt to lose.

Daichi invited Suga to stay at his place, trying to get Asahi and Nishinoya's fight off of Suga's mind. In all honesty, Daichi needed to get it off his mind too; Suga was a nice distraction.  They managed to stay away from conversations about volleyball for most of the night.  They were too occupied with Mario Kart and discussions about who would win in a fight, Yoshi or a kappa.

"Just saying, kappas are tricky," Daichi said as he made Yoshi throw a banana peel.

"You don't get to argue for kappas if you're playing Yoshi," Suga countered.

"Don't tell me what to do, I outrank you."

"What?"

"Team Captain, remember?"

"Don't pull rank on me, I'm your Vice Captain!"

"I revoke your Vice Captain-ship."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Gonna give it to Asahi instea-."

Daichi snapped his mouth shut, but the damage was done.  Suga fell silent, his demeanor shifting.  Daichi paused the game.  He set down his controller and pulled Suga in for a hug.  Suga tensed.

"Suga, I'm sorry," Daichi said.

"There's nothing for you to apologize for," Suga whispered.  "I'm the one who messed up."

"You didn't mess up. Not during the game, not during their fight.  This isn't on you."

When Suga didn't reply, Daichi pressed on, "We lost because they were the better team.  This is on all of us, and you don't need to carry this alone."

Daichi felt Suga nod against his shoulder.

"We'll make it through this," Daichi said as he gave Suga another squeeze.  "I promise.  We've got a fresh batch of first years coming soon, and we'll be back better than ever."

"And we'll get to Nationals," Suga whispered.

Daichi pulled away and smiled at Suga.  "Yeah, we'll get to Nationals."

Suga grinned at Daichi, his eyes shining with tears.  Daichi blinked, and the world went back to its monochromatic state, but for a split second, he had seen Suga's eye color once again.

***

Three years, in Daichi's opinion, had gone by way too fast.  Three whole years, and here he was, standing proud before his team, giving them one last send off before passing the title of Captain onto Ennoshita. It was making him tear up a little, he wasn't going to lie.  The team had been through so much together, and now….  Daichi could feel a tear run down his face.  Five minutes.  He lasted longer than Suga and Asahi had.  Wiping his face, Daichi gathered the team for one last huddle, throwing his arms around Suga and Asahi's shoulders.

"Daichi, when we're done, do you have a second?" Suga whispered.

Daichi nodded.  The group let out one last, "Karasuno, FIGHT" as the group dissolved into full on sobbing.  Half an hour later, the third years left the gym for the last time. Kiyoko was the first to leave, giving the others each a hug before heading home.  Asahi headed down to Coach Ukai's store to buy pork buns one last time. Daichi and Suga were alone.

"So, Suga, what did you need?"

Suga scuffed a shoe against the ground, not making eye contact with Daichi.  "I'm not sure how to put this."

"You can tell me anything, you know that," Daichi said.

"I know, it's just…"

Suga exhaled, "Have you… ever seen color?  When we were together, I mean."

Daichi blinked; this was unexpected.

"Once or twice," Daichi admitted.  "Why?"

"I have too," Suga said.  "And I don't know what it means, but I just want to say this.  When I first met you, I didn't notice a difference.  There was no pop of color, nothing.  But I knew that there was something about you.  You were someone I wanted to be around.  Your work ethic and your motivation were admirable, and it didn't hurt that you were cute.  And the more I got to know you, the more I realized that I didn't just want to be around you, I wanted to be in your life for the rest of mine.  You mean so much to me, as more than just a friend, but I don't need you to be more than that to be happy.  And I think that's what it means to be someone's soulmate. The color is a nice touch, but to be someone's soulmate is to be happy with whatever they are in your life because no matter what, they're a constant.  Daichi, I love you, and I am so grateful to have you in my life.  And—wait, why are you crying?"

Daichi touched his face, feeling the tear tracks on his face.  He hadn't even realized that he had been crying, he had been too caught up in Suga's confession.

Suga was in full panic mode at that point, anxiously flitting around Daichi as he spoke, "Daichi, I'm so sorry, please don't cry!  Oh god this is not how I thought this would go-."

"Suga," Daichi said, cutting into Suga's rambling.

Suga froze.  Daichi tried not to laugh at his wide eyed expression. Instead, he cupped Suga's face, drawing him close.  He brushed a thumb across Suga's cheek as he leaned closer.

"Can I?" he asked.

"Please do," Suga replied.

Daichi pressed his lips to Suga's, his eyes sliding shut as he leaned closer.  He felt Suga's hands travel up his back, coming to rest on his shoulders and giving them a squeeze.  They kissed for a few more seconds, then pulled away to rest their foreheads against one another.

"Daichi, open your eyes," Suga whispered.

Daichi complied.  Then he gasped.

Color was brighter than Daichi had expected it to be.  There were so many shades and hues and everything looked complete.  It was a lot to take in all at once.

"You were right," Suga said.  "Your hair is black.  It suits you."

Daichi turned back to Suga, deciding that he never wanted to take his eyes off Suga again.  Suga's hair was gray, that much hadn't changed. But his eyes.  His eyes were a bright brown, almost amber.  Daichi always knew that Suga's eyes had a spark to them, but now that he could see them in color, they were that much better in Daichi's opinion.

"Like what you see?" Suga teased.

Daichi pulled Suga in close, pressing his forehead against Suga's as he whispered, "Yeah, I really do."

"Daichi, that's disgustingly sappy.  Never stop."

Daichi grinned. "I won't."

[bearsofair]

I arrive early at the LA hotel where I'm meeting Game of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie, and my first impression of the actor is formed in a millisecond when I bump into her in a hallway. Unusually and ethereally beautiful, towering above me, there's no mistaking the 39-year-old who stars as the indomitable Brienne of Tarth in the must-watch TV series, and who is reprising her role as the villainous Captain Phasma in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. (She first played the kickass stormtrooper in the previous chapter, 2015's The Force Awakens.) Wearing a see-though black Fendi top and narrow trousers, her blonde hair is wavy and bobbed. With her porcelain skin and 191-centimetre stature, she could easily look intimidating. But her bright smile makes her approachable, so I tell her, in an embarrassing babble, that I love her work and that my two daughters are huge fans. She seems delighted, as though compliments are not at all commonplace. Is she enjoying Hollywood stardom? "I don't think I would ever term myself as a Hollywood star… ever," she responds with a loud laugh, while admitting that "things seem to be going quite well". That sounds like an understatement. "Well it's always great, isn't it, when you feel a level of creative fulfilment in your work?" says Gwendoline in her lovely melodic voice.

She has every reason to be in good spirits. Her film career is in flight and life post-Westeros looks exciting. She has loved Star Wars since she was six, she tells me later, ushering me into her hotel suite and settling beside me on the sofa, poised, hands clasped. "Everyone wants to be in Star Wars. It is such a huge global phenomenon; I desperately wanted the role." The latest instalment in the franchise sees Mark Hamill's Luke Skywalker in a prominent role with an apparently shocking twist. There will also a strong focus on a new generation of characters, including purple-haired Vice-Admiral Holdo, played by Laura Dern. Since the release of The Force Awakens, Gwendoline's "chrome trooper" has become a fan favourite. "Phasma seems to have ignited a lot of curiosity," she says. "The idea of a woman exhibiting a violent attitude is not something we see a huge amount of in mainstream media." There is speculation that Phasma has a much bigger role in the upcoming film, directed by Rian Johnson, but inevitably the actor is giving nothing away beyond referring to her character as "a threatening presence". Can she say anything about the plot, which continues the story of the powerful Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and resistance pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac)? "Well, no." A few seconds of dead air are interrupted by a hearty laugh. She is less restrained about her excitement at working with one of her role models, Carrie Fisher (General Leia Organa), the Hollywood legend who died suddenly at the end of last year. "Princess Leia spoke to me," says Gwendoline of the original Star Wars. "She felt different, she was smart and she was strong." No wonder Gwendoline was "very, very starstruck" when she was introduced to Fisher. "When I meet someone I admire like that, I keep myself as far away as possible from the person, you know, don't bother them, eyes down at the floor. I am overcome with shyness. But, actually, Carrie was incredibly warm. Everyone around her felt electrified by her wit and humanity. She was so open about her struggles with mental illness. The sheer force of personality is ravishing." The same could be said of Gwendoline. It's no coincidence that the characters that have defined her career so far have been warriors ranging across the moral spectrum, from Brienne of Tarth – all goodness and altruistic selflessness – to the pure evil of Captain Phasma. She inhabits the kind of roles that are still rare for women. Brienne of Tarth, for example, is considered to be plain looking. "It has been thrilling for me to play her, particularly since she is a woman much maligned by society due to the way she looks," she says. As for Captain Phasma, audiences didn't even get a glimpse of her face in The Force Awakens, the stormtrooper being clad from head to toe in metal. "I've never really placed a huge emphasis on people's physical being," she says. "I remember Carrie Fisher referring to her body as her 'brain bag'." It's a subject that fascinates the actor, who is as intellectually curious as she is warm and funny. "We are so used to seeing images of women who are mostly conventionally attractive, and frequently scantily clad, and I found that a little restrictive," she says. "We have had a homogenised view not just of women, but really of the world. I think we all want to see ourselves represented [on screen] in some way." She has an affinity for playing outsiders, "characters that feel like they aren't seen and don't fit in. Most of my life I have felt somewhat outside of the conventions of society – and certainly outside the conventions of the acting community." Gwendoline was born and raised in West Sussex, "the only product of my mother and father". She is deliberate about her choice of words, avoiding the term "only child". In fact, she describes her early life as "idyllic – I grew up in the countryside surrounded by fields and forests. I used to play outside all the time. I was generally alone, but I loved to read." Away from the sanctuary of her close-knit family, however, life was difficult. "I absolutely hated school because I was bullied quite a lot." She was bookish and "really enjoyed being in the library, but I didn't enjoy the other students". Was she bullied because of her height? "I don't think it was just my height." She pauses. "I don't know. I'm really not interested in talking about the bullying; what I am interested in is transcending that, because there is too much of an emphasis on suffering. We need to look at how we overcome it." She explains her own coping mechanism: "I looked for where the sunshine was – for those who'd be more accepting and stimulating." As a child, Gwendoline threw herself into hobbies – dancing and rhythmic gymnastics (she had to stop because of a spine injury at age 11). "Retrospectively, I realise what I loved about gymnastics was the rigour of being disciplined and precise, and then applying the flow of emotion and imagination to that." Films provided "escapism", she says, singling out Orlando (1992), directed by Sally Potter, as "important". I can't help mentioning that she has been compared to the film's star, Tilda Swinton. "Well, that is an incredibly generous comparison," she exclaims. "I think she is a truly exceptional artist; she is doing her own thing." It's something Gwendoline has always done, too. Her parents were "incredibly supportive" and there's a story that when she was young her father told her, "You can do anything a boy can do." "He didn't use those exact words," says Gwendoline. "But he did say, 'There's no reason why you can't achieve anything.' " Intent on acting from an early age, she recalls watching films as a teenager and wondering why the women's parts were so often boring. "When we studied classical plays at school, I wanted to play the male parts. I didn't understand why women would be treated in a certain way just because they were women. It didn't make any sense. A lot of things didn't make any sense." Life began to make more sense when Gwendoline left school and enrolled in art college. "I became friends with artists working in the fashion industry, and musicians. That is really where I found my family – unconventional people who were totally accepting of themselves in all of their colourfulness and extreme personalities." She went on to study acting at Drama Centre, London – "a conservatoire with a classical training and method approach" which she describes as life-changing. "It was hard, 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week. It was psychologically rigorous. You were broken down and sometimes criticised. It caused you to have an internal investigation of who you were, and that gave me confidence. They trained us to be artists." In her early 20s, Gwendoline also began working for the actor Simon Callow (Outlander, Four Weddings and a Funeral). "He gave me an enormous amount of confidence," she says. "He also educated me. He had an incredible house filled with music and books, and I looked after his two wonderful dogs. He is one of the closest and most trusted people in my life." With Callow's support, Gwendoline's career took off via well-reviewed stage performances and supporting roles in films including The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, before being cast as Brienne of Tarth in 2011. In doing so, she defied predictions that she'd find it difficult to work because of her height. In fact, her stature and dramatic looks played to her advantage. With friends in the world of couture – she was interested in fashion long before art college – Gwendoline was in high demand as a model and became a muse of Vivienne Westwood. These days, she often collaborates with her partner of five years, British fashion designer Giles Deacon. She won't discuss her relationship with Deacon, citing her need for a private life that's just that. "Because of the phantasmagorical nature of being an actor, you have to have your own reality," she says. She explains that her "friends, family and partner form such an essential part of that reality that I do everything I can to get home, to see people as much as possible – because it is that life which is going to feed your work". Steering the subject back to her career, she happily tells me she is about to work alongside Steve Carell in The Women of Marwen. And she is enthusiastic about her recent role in Jane Campion's Top of the Lake: China Girl, the sequel to Campion's award-winning 2013 TV drama. In it, she played Miranda Hilmarson, a Sydney police officer assigned to work with detective Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss) investigating the death of a woman whose body washes up on Bondi Beach. A confirmed Campion fan, Gwendoline wrote to the New Zealand director pleading to be cast in the series, which also stars Nicole Kidman. "I love Jane because she is interested in women, in a fairer balance between men and women, and she is very interested in the subject of misogyny." She adds that Top of the Lake: China Girl "deals with what it is to be a woman and a mother, what it is to deal with feeling marginalised". Other than spending time with friends and family, Gwendoline's current focus is firmly on her career. So, what are her goals? "To create my own material – write it, direct it, design it, produce it. That is what I would love to do – if I wasn't so idle and lacking in imagination!"