#is this coherent. i think it devolved as i went

[gamerism]

1000% percent all this. The video is highly entertaining and a fun watch and I owe it knowing about pathologic as many english speaking fans do but ! So many people have walked away from that video letting it shape a whole set-in-stone view of what pathologic is and what its protagonists are like. Which is just like...extremely depressing. Hbomb would be disappointed in you all, I'm tell you that now.

I've never been able to figure out why he emphasises the "the game hates you" myth. The game does not hate you, it takes your hand and explains everything you need to know if you care to pay even a bit of attention to the tutorial (yes I know we're all trained out of doing that but please please do for pathologic you will not regret this) and the game gives you outs! It is trying to give the player an emotional experience to heighten the tone of hopelessness/desperation/ect/ect but its not supposed to be a miserable slog.

To give an example of an Out pathologic 2 (haruspex route) gives the player, and p2 is the harder game here, on day 5 you might be really tight on food on your first playthrough. You don't really know going in just how critical hoarding food on day 1 & 2 is. I know I was getting close to starving around day 5/6, and the game knew I might be in that position then. And it gave me the bull sidequest! You go cut a bull for the Kin and they give you some of the meat, which is the most filling & most expensive food in the game. That saved my playthrough pretty much! And the game has dozens of things like that.

Pathologic Classic is just like, an easier game. I have no idea where the "so so hard you'll be miserable" thing ever came from. Its just...Not. Its a bit janky at times in a way that can end up being frustrating, but that's relatively minor, and the game's overall base difficulty is much lower than pathologic 2's. (I haven't compared classic to p2's lowest settings, and as you said, 2 added the ability to change the difficulty which is a very good thing.)

You mentioned Daniil not being an irredeemable jerk in p2 since that's what you've played, as someone who has also played (most of) classic bachelor route, and marble nest.... The guy is even Less of a jerk when you play him. Like he is not a saint but this imagined version of him that is just The Worst is deeply strange. Dankovsky is just A Guy. I haven't played changeling route and maybe he's an asshole there I'm not sure. (I know he's fighting with Artemy, but I think he's also kind to Clara?) But each route views the other protagonists through distorted lenses. Like when not playing Clara we clearly learn that she sees malevolence towards herself and goals in some of Artemy and Daniil's actions that simply isn't there. (And from Daniil's eyes we see Artemy a bit more how the town gossips about him to be, ect ect ect) So I wouldn't take the version of him that exists in changeling as more true than the versions we play as in classic bachelor route & in marble nest.

Have you seen hbomberguy's video? Curious re your thoughts on it.

god I'm so sorry sddfgfdsj I meant to answer this 1000 times today but I kept falling asleep due to The Sunday Sleepies.

Overall I think it's a good into to patho, I think it's great how much attention it brought to the game, and I think overall he gets the main themes of the first game. I've seen better essays / video essays that delve deeper into its influences specifically in the context of what european / russian texts and theatres it's drawing from for dankovsky, and stuff that REALLY tackles how it fucks up colonial/imperialism themes despite how earnestly it wants to engage with them. But overall, as a video that introduces an obscure game to a wider audience, yeah it's great.

But oh my god the RESPONSE to it? Has not been great.

There's this great long post, I forget where, about how you can't just watch a video essay on a text and come away expecting to be an expert on that text. How the video essay is one person's experience and interpretation of a text intensely filtering it and passing it on to you, and to you that then becomes The Text, even though it is fundamentally a DIFFERENT text. It's not a complete game, it's a video from one guy's perspective focusing on certain aspects. I think this is ESPECIALLY true for hbomb's video because the way he emphasises how the game hates you personally and wants you to die puts people off of playing it for themselves.

In a lot of ways, in the public / internet consciousness, Hbomb's patho video has BECOME Pathologic to people. They're not thinking of the game, they're thinking of His Video. Which is fucked because like. Ugh.

For example: The video doesn't give Changeling Route the attention it really deserves. There's a reason for this - Changeling Route is the route the devs had the least time to develop. So, the more polished routes of bachelor and haruspex naturally took up more of hbomb's attention. That's fine! It's a natural response to the game! What's not fine is how the internet has taken that Response To The Text as being The Text, and now discussion about the game, because it's a Response To A Response To The Text like a game of telephone, is so heavily centered on Daniil. With each new iteration of response, Daniil becomes more and more central to the audience response until suddenly we're in a position where Daniil Dankovsky IS pathologic.

What I ESPECIALLY hate is that. Pathologic 2 is a totally different game, in more ways than I could possibly get into. The story is different, the characters are portrayed differently. But Pathologic 2, despite being infinitely more playable than patho 1 and even coming with accessibility difficulty options that can turn it into a borderline walking simulator, is IGNORED because "oh we saw the hbomb video we know what patho is about!" Which means I now have people who admit to not playing patho 2 telling me "daniil is a PRICK he's a PRICKLY PRICK HAHAH" when that is not the case in patho 2. I played pathologic 2! I know who Pathologic 2 Daniil Dankovsky is! I met him! You watched a VIDEO about Daniil Dankovsky that exaggerared his traits in a different game for COMEDY!

Sorry I got super off track there. Anyway to sum up: I think the video itself is great, but I wish it wasn't treated as The Text. Hbomb shows a lot of love for The Actual Text in that video and it's a shame that people don't want to actually experience it because they think they already have somehow.

[so-mordor-itis]

Eye on You

“give peace a chance, let the fear you have fall away, i’ve got my eye on you. say yes to heaven, say yes to me.

if you go, I’ll stay.. you come back, I’ll be right here. like a barge at sea, in the storm I stay clear, cause I’ve got my mind on you”

I told you I'd write a drabble but uhhhhh this ain't no drabble- @unhealthy-leon-brainrot

1998.

Leon loved differently back then. He loved in a way a 21 year old man freshly graduated from college could. He was giddy whenever the person in his interest would smile at him, would give him any time of day. His hands would become clammy, and his heart would race as if he were still a teenager. Sometimes, he truly felt like one at heart. That his soul was trapped in that time period, and it wouldn't ever leave.

It's why when he met you for the first time, and when you smiled at him as if nothing could go wrong, his face burned, and his heart almost burst right then and there. You were a brilliant flame, and he felt like a small candle stick awaiting to be lit.

He asked you out in a sputter of words, hating himself immediately after listening to them tumble. Leon didn't want his nervousness to show. He had been practicing for weeks in front of bathroom mirrors and sometimes in the Officer's Academy shower, hoping nobody overheard him. He wanted it to be perfect because that's what you deserved.

You giggled, and somehow, his heart both fluttered and sank. Your eyes glittered with an emotion that made him slightly hopeful. "You want to take me out on a date?"

"Yeah," he replied, all too quickly. "If you'd like to that is--only if you'd like to." He wished he could stop himself from talking, but he couldn't.

You smiled at him, and dammit there went the last of his coherent thoughts. "You know what? Sure. I don't have anything interesting going on." You laughed again, looking away shyly. "I can't say no when you're looking at me like that."

"Like what?" Leon asked, though he fully knew what you were talking about.

"Like I'm the only thing on your mind," you responded. You were fidgeting with your shirt, and Leon wanted nothing more than to grab your hands and hold them.

You weren't incorrect, either. You were on his mind a frightening amount. This affection for you was a buzz in the back of his mind, a throb in his chest.

You still said yes.

"So it's a date?"

"Yes, it's a date."

He swore he grinned from ear to ear, and he saw you return it.

--

The day he was supposed to pick you up, he never did. You were more worried than disappointed. Leon didn't seem like the type of guy you ask you out, gazing at you as if you created the sky and the stars, and then drop you like a hat. Despite the bitter part of you wanting to think he ditched you, the rational part knew better.

He called you hours later, apologetic and broken. "I'm so sorry. Something... something came up."

"Forget the date," you quickly muttered, surprised at how swift the words left your mouth. "Are you okay?"

He was silent for a bit. "Not really."

"Where are you? I'm coming to you."

"No, wait," Leon called your name almost in a plea. "I don't want you to drag yourself into this."

You weren't backing down without a little bit of a fight. "Leon, please."

He paused before stating he was in a hospital outside of Raccoon City.

--

Leon knew he loved you after that. He never admitted to himself until he was sure, but he couldn't prevent that innocent crush from growing into something more powerful.

You became a firework, blazing in his lonely, starless sky. You had always been.

2004.

He liked to believe he still loved the same. Wanted to love the same as he did all those years ago. His heart pounding and his palms becoming clammy, blue eyes full of innocent love.

He knew he didn't.

Leon was reserved now, awkward with his affection, hesitant with his touches yet still craved it. He hated that you had to watch him develop--no, perhaps devolve was the better word here--this trauma response. This training, this work, it all collapsed on top of him, and sometimes he felt as if it would eventually crush him.

Yet, some part of you still saw his old self. That stupid, lovesick boy who craved your attention the way a puppy would a scrap of food. You still gave him love, still kissed his scars, still told him sweet nothings when he broke down crying because the pressure was too much.

He once asked you if you were okay with all of this still, okay with him. You gave him your usual smile, the one that made him weak and touched that lovesick boy deep down. "You're stuck with me, Leon. I gave myself to you the day you asked me out. I'm staying. No matter what happens, I'm here."

He kissed you hard that day. Harder than he ever had. Placing a promise against your lips that he would always come back to you. No matter what.

--

You often wondered what he would do without you. If he would crash and burn the moment you turned around, if the night terrors would claw at his throat and suffocate him.

It was hard, watching him suffer mentally when all you could do was give him words of affirmation. Reassure him that the nightmares weren't real and that you were truly there with him and not bloodied up and dead.

Those moments made the good ones feel like precious gifts. Not just for you, but also for him. You carried them in your heart and held on to those when the bad days would storm over his head.

You remembered one of those good days so clearly, so vividly it never failed to make you smile. One day, while looking over some files, Leon had fallen asleep. His glasses--the ones he usually only used whenever he was reading important work files--were scrunched against his face, pushing up against the bridge of his nose. You remembered walking into his office, snickering a little at the sight. You sighed, shaking your head. "What am I going to do with you?"

You approached him quietly, as if the smallest movement would ruin his peaceful slumber. You grabbed the rims of his glasses carefully, pulling them off his face so he'd be more comfortable. As you did, you caught a feel of his soft locks and couldn't help but lightly smooth between your fingers. You took note of his facial features; his cheekbones were more rigid, and the shadows of his eyes were sunken in. His hair was even a bit darker, looking dirtier blond than it had when you first met. Still handsome, that would never change.

The urge to kiss his forehead had you twitching, but you didn’t want to disturb him. Especially since he had probably been staring at documented words for who knows how long.

You moved to quietly nudge yourself away before his sleepy voice mumbled. "Gonna go so soon?"

You blinked, looking down to see his eyes were now open. Still hazy from his rest. You practically beamed at him. "Didn't wanna wake you."

Leon sat up, stretching a little before putting his glasses back on. "Guess I must've passed out. These reports practically put me to sleep. I can't believe this is part of what they pay me for."

You attempted to catch a glimpse of whatever was on the document, but he placed them flat on the table when he caught you.

Leon snickered. "Classified. Sorry, baby."

You pouted a little. "Can't I help my boyfriend out a little?"

He stood up and stretched more, popping his back. "Not if it means you getting in trouble by seeing the reports. I'd also get in trouble, and we definitely wouldn't want that."

"Man, and here I thought I'd be able to see the famous missions Leon Kennedy goes on," you teased.

Leon just rolled his eyes as if you two had had this discussion before. You have. You just like to see him smile. Distract him as much as you could.

"Become an agent, then we'll talk." He took off his glasses and put them back on his desk. He placed his gaze upon you, and you could feel the adoration in his eyes. He still looked at you as if you had created the sky, the moon, the stars. As if you were his sun and he orbited around you and only you. You would never get over it.

Leon mimicked the action you were doing earlier and parted your hair from your cheeks so he could kiss your forehead.

His work phone rang loud, interrupting the moment. Leon sighed and kissed you quickly against the lips before the obligation to his duty forced him to go answer it.

"Kennedy. Yes, sir."

You observed his body language as he discussed with his superior. His shoulders went rigid, his eyes focused as if he were already on the field. He was prepared for whatever they were about to tell him because he had to be.

He hung up after a minute of giving affirming hums and a variety of yeses. Leon plopped his phone on the documentations and gave you an apologetic look.

"Don't worry about it." You shook your head. You knew what he was about to say. He didn't even need to tell you anything out loud. His eyes told the whole story.

"I really don't deserve you," he mumbled. "Makes me wonder how you do it."

"Because I love you." You said simply. "I'm here to stay, remember?"

--

|Tags:|

@seraphiism , @uhlunaro , @izuniias , @honeyfict , @konigbabe , @leonskillshot , @airanke , @muffimtv , @justonemore-fic , @mandalhoerian , @tosuckmyweenis , @boundinparchment

[chosoniisan]

caught in the middle ▶︎▶︎ choso + suguru (r18)

➤ pairing: kamo choso | reader | getou suguru

➤ setting: modern, non-curse au (uni au, specifically)

➤ genre: smut!! (a little dark, just a lil')

➤ caution: threesome (ish); a splash of d*bious c*nsent (coercion); oral s*x (p & v); rough treatment

➤ summary: according to suguru (no thanks to choso), you're too inexperienced for your own good; he intends to change that

➤ authoress' notes: I was struck with the idea of choso and suguru tag teaming you, and so this was born plus I haven't written smut in so long and wanted to dust myself off. my hope is that I can make this into a lil mini series, because I'm keen to continue exploring the concept of suguru showing you & choso the ropes when it comes to the downright nasty. I'm also keen to playing into a degenerate characterization of suguru, but that's neither here nor there :')

“Remember what I said—don’t let her cum before I do.”

Would you have preferred him talking to you rather than over you?

Who knows, but what you do know is that either way you’re the last one who’s primed to contribute any sort of coherent response. And how could you when you’re currently suffering from acute choking-on-Suguru��s-girth disease of which your symptoms include aching in your jaw, saltiness clinging to your palate, and, of course, an affinity for only breathing through the mostly muffled, the utterly debauched.

But he’s only one accessory to the crime of ruining you from both ends with the other half of the blame resting on Choso’s shoulders, coupled with you resting entirely on his face. How much “persuasion” went into this arrangement is a story for later if ever, particularly when Choso’s not flattening his tongue for another pass across the seam of your lower lips, as though a consolation for drawing back at the last second. 

“. . .That doesn’t seem fair to her,” he pitches in your defense, and for that he has your appreciation, even if speaking up for you brings with it the fanning of his breath, teasing of his pinked tiers where you’re most sensitive. It isn’t a perfect solution. . .or much of one at all, considering he makes a point to return to the source of intoxication, courtesy of a rogue flicker over you in that empty space—not so much with the ripple effect that sends you sputtering around Suguru and wishing he isn’t crammed so deeply in your mouth. “She always likes it when I eat her out, and I really want her to cum on me. . .”

Just like Choso’s blatant admission, so too is the embarrassment scorching through your insides, bubbling up over the expanse of your face; though you can only contemplate craning back since Suguru is enough steps ahead of you to crown his fingers through your hair. Suffice it to say, you aren’t going anywhere besides the engorged length of him, filling you up to the absolute brim. (Clearly addressing Choso’s knack for oversharing to your detriment will also have to wait for another time. And honestly, you’re not entirely sure you would have gotten through to him when he’s this overtaken by the peachy pit between your legs.)

Off the heels of abashment, you falter a bit as those pesky digits relinquish their hold on your tresses once Suguru’s commanded your compliance again. He’s silkly devious that way, tracing the pads of his fingertips across your cheek at first before his thumb presses at the corner of your lips and strains the tender flesh even further around his member. Unlike earlier, his sunglow gaze is trained wholly on you and no one else, nursing a glossy sheen atop your skin (then there’s Choso who isn’t helping your case either, wetting saliva over your folds). “Don’t you think that’s selfish of you?”

Is what Suguru says in the same moment that he’s devolved into using his hand on your face to guide you even further onto him, until he’s bobbing dangerously near the back of your throat, preluding what’s to come. Though as for the right now, he’s thoroughly effected by your oral sleeve, those last vestiges of self-constraint gradually falling to the wayside in a wash of heartthrob red laying claim to more and more of his face. “You have me to thank for this—yet you’re only concerned about getting off yourself.” His chiding has an edge of something else, which persists in obscurity as you’re beholden to a punctuated ram throwing you off kilter. “I didn’t think you were a selfish girl. . .” he trails off there, leading you along his very short leash. “Tell me I’m not wrong about you.”

You don’t tell Suguru anything—instead, you offer a semblance of a nod, accompanied by an even greater offering of slickened reverence to his cock as you work him feverishly into your mouth, skimming over the vein webbed on his underside. That sets off the chain reaction of him folding over you with a malted groan spilt from his lips, and in the meantime you rear your hips back, hoping Choso takes the hint to sympathize with your plight of not wanting to fall over the edge too soon. Because if he keeps at his previous pace, you have no doubt in your mind that you’ll be reacquainted with the sort of rapture only he knows how to indulge you in.

Surprisingly, Choso is receptive to your wordless plea even while he steers you back onto him with hands curled over your sides; the hum of a sigh inked in relief strums through him as he stitches himself back to you in earnest. Like each ticking second spent away from your heat was a second shaved from his existence. He’s measured for once with his devotion, smearing beads of your wetness to pave the way for his tongue breaching past your pleated slit and settling between your inner walls with a sinful ease. From you, there’s a whine that splinters into pieces the moment it hits the air as you’re realizing (belatedly) that you severely underestimated Choso’s proclivity for cultivating you into pure bliss.

It's too late now with his one-track mind and equally fervent ministrations, so you try to make what you can out of the situation in spite of electricity sparking over your nerves, the incessant bubbling up in your stomach already signaling the beginning of the end. And you need look no further than the weight of Suguru seeded on your tongue. Choso might be stealing a good chunk of your attention, but that doesn’t stop you from fixating on the sting at the outer edges of your lips from a tight fit or the soon-to-be mottling over your knees trying to keep yourself steady in the midst of a deterioration into downright battering. How quickly demanding bruises through Suguru like a contagion, the strain that’s cured only from your undoing by his hand, and so you’re left with no choice but to let yourself be caught up by him, in him, for the sake of him.

“You know. . .you’re not very good at this,” Suguru remarks as if he isn’t fiercely warming himself between your lips, because only he could pull himself together enough to tear into you with a breezy tinge in his wake, the proverbial salt in your wound. Sooner rather than later, his hand finds itself tangled at the back of your head, dragging you right down to the base of him, and your scramble to smother your gag reflex (and Choso in the process) through a hail of full-bodied quaking merely proves his point. “You’re lucky I’m willing to teach you how to properly suck dick, since Choso clearly isn’t giving you enough practice.”

Speaking of—it’s right then and there that Choso takes the opportunity to really spear you on his tongue.

He isn’t taking that dig too well.

Problem is. . .his displeasure is misplaced, or at least it feels that way when his fingers move to split open your folds so he can bully and prod at the spot that has you blinking back stars in collapse. A whine sets the stage for your frantic writhing atop Choso, trying your best to dislodge him for your own good, but he’s resistant to coaxing of any kind when you’re falling apart at his beck. It’s one thing to bear through an unrelenting Choso, molding you to the shape of his sticky sweet pleasure, but it’s another thing entirely to keep your head above the waters of gratification whilst swallowing down every inch of Suguru’s cock.

And he doesn’t make it any easier for you, you who’s allegedly rough around the edges in the craft of obliging a man. Breathing might as well be a luxury what with Suguru beating your throat raw with his swollen tip, and there’s no finesse in the way you fumble your tongue over him; either your efforts aren’t clumsy enough to warrant a snide affront or he’s far too consumed with chasing after his own end through you. (You’re inclined to think it’s the latter more so than the former.) Beneath the chorus of depravity suffusing the room, your heart is heavy against your ribcage, and you can only hope that Suguru acquiesces first, even if that means holding your nose to his c—

Lips seal around your clit with particular fervor.

Oh, no.

No no no no no.

A sweeping arch invites itself over your back in the same beat that you instinctively squeeze your thighs around Choso’s head, surrendering even more of yourself to his gluttony. It’s a vicious, depraved cycle because with every convulsion racking down to your bones, you’re anchored back to him gorging on you with little abandon, utterly remorseless that he’s driving you out of your mind. Ecstasy is oh so malted, tastes like a milk & honey delicacy while Choso can’t seem to decide whether to savor your pulsing clit or root through your tightly knotted, dripping wet clutch. Though it’s the bitter part of that sweetness sobering you up before you have a chance to feed into the velveted hunger that’s ravaging as it is rosied:

“You really don’t listen, do you.” His infliction isn’t the slow, too slow drag of his shaft along your tongue nor is it him relinquishing your mouth to slide along the side of your face. And neither is it the obscene tap, tapping of his ruddy cockhead against your cheek, streaking a mess of juices over the once untouched canvas of you.

Blinking bleariness from your vision and yet his moonless gaze, crackling at the edges, is clear as day—says there’s no need to wait long for true retribution.

 “I guess, I’ll have to give you a lesson in obedience, too—my treat.”

[luimagines]

HI PINKY ! 🎻 Anon here ✧⁠◝⁠(⁠⁰⁠▿⁠⁰⁠)⁠◜⁠✧

My finals went overall quite well! (Except for one final but my overall grade was still fine so we're all good) I did end up having my ceiling of my room collapse though! (⁠ノ⁠｀⁠Д⁠´⁠)⁠ノ⁠彡⁠┻⁠━⁠┻ Gotta love landlords that refuse to do proper house maintenance on century old homes. So right before finals had my ceilings collapse, then had finals while stuck sleeping in the living room (to be fair the couch was comfy but the whole setup is less than ideal), and then literally the evening after my last final flew out to literal other side of the planet for college visits. So needless to say I've been rather tired recently! It's been fun though and I also got to see some family that I rarely see again so that was nice. BUT! I finally have the mental bandwidth to send in an ask again. So enough with the dramatic rambling about my life I have more ideas about the human hero reader I thought of!

So! I learned just the other day that an army captain is actually kinda low rank. (At least in the US military, can't speak to other systems) And you usually get there within like 4 years of your career as an officer. And if Wars is around 24-26ish (at least that's how old I usually imagine him since he's one of the older members of the group but not like OLD) and he would have started his time in the military as like a 17-18 year old, buddy boy would actually be behind on his career. (Stick with me this will all come together I swear!)

So I imagine human hero reader (I'm calling them hh!reader for my sanity to specify from here on out for my sanity) ended up getting pulled into the military after saving Hyrule. They really don't like being there, but the royal family of that time doesn't really give reader a choice. I'd imagine them most likely being a very low rank enlisted soldier. (If you require explanations for anything just let me know. I am more than happy to explain and understand most people haven't been raised around this stuff) But because reader didn't want to join the military in the first place and Warriors is one of the MOST wary member of the chain they would probably butt heads quite a bit. I imagine reader with an attitude of while they're usually a very nice person to be around they can hold a strong grudge and aren't afraid to tell someone if they're being an idiot. Not something that goes over well in the military. So reader probably targets at least some of that frustration to the resident military man. And something that would be rather easy to go for is that fact that he still hasn't been promoted. This would probably devolve into him telling them that they suck as a soldier until reader snaps and said they never had any choice in the matter and they storm off. Probably one of the their merry little band would go after reader. I think Sky might be best since he's a knight himself so he'd have a better idea what they were going through. Wind would also be an interesting option especially if it's after the whole "We're the same since we both made the active decision to save Hyrule!" moment. Both are good chances at bonding. Oh yeah I guess it's relevant that I see reader at an older teen age, like 16-17. Yay sibling dynamics (I say this like my only younger sibling doesn't drive me up a wall). I'll prolly add more later but I am tired. And I have a relatively early morning tomorrow.

Hope this was coherent but I actually had motivation for once so I went for it. If any clarification is needed just ask. Make sure to drink water and eat a snack! Self care is important to help prevent burnout. Have a lovely week. Good day/evening) ┌⁠|⁠o⁠^⁠▽⁠^⁠o⁠|⁠┘⁠♪ See you maybe once I've slept and ate. Bye!!

Oh, I thought you going to go the path of Reader outranking Warrior and him not being able to do anything about it. ^.^*

It reminded me of that one post for Marvel where Tony got excited because Rhodey, being Colonel, outranked Steve and could tell him what to do.

I'd imagine if Warrior pulled out the whole "you suck as a soldier" Wild would have to push back a bit because if they suck, what does that make him? He died! Hello? At least Reader had something going for them. They still won in the end with minimal loses on their side.

Wild lost everyone.

So what does Warrior actually think of him then?

[narrators-journal]

may i request persona 2 katsuya suou/nekomata please? if at all possible, could katsuya be under the effects of "blow a kiss" (charm spell) but have it go wrong in front of the party (maya, ulala, baofu, elly or nanjo if you wish)? if you feel so inclined, emphasising how katsuya has no sense of decency (undresses himself) while in front of his friends (varying degrees of interested, embarrassed, and amused) would be really neat.

if you're not in the mood to write nekomata sex, then just making him fuck one of the other party members works fine. same reactions though... katsuya's a freak

I just sort of let this one...flow. So, it didn’t end up very aligned with the actual ask as I just let the horny vibes flow a bit. Then, I went back and I cleaned it up, shaped it up a bit into a coherent scenario, but I left a lot up to the reader. Namely the aftermath. I didn’t know how to end this one really well, so! It’s up to ya’ll lol.

Jk, kinda. In all seriousness, I just sort of rolled with what felt right and tried to keep at least a little? Of the ask’s spirit. Sorry that it didn’t follow it real well. I WAS originally gonna go for the monsterfucking, but I didn’t think Maya would let Katsuya do that lol. So, I went instead for the team mate option and made it into some Katsubao bc I like their dynamic so far in the game. I hope you find this bit o’ writing just as enjoyable!

CW: Gentle amounts of semi-public energy. They’re in a gym locker room at least. Hand jobs, aphrodisiacs.

Baofu shoved a shirtless, half undressed Katsuya Suou into GOLD’s empty men’s locker room and onto one of the benches between the rows of cold, silver lockers. The demonic power of the Nekomata’s attack like a thick miasma on the man’s sun-tanned skin. “Breathe, Katsudon, before you pass out.” the gruff man ordered when the officer began to pant like a dog in summer despite the chill of the metal bench. Though, he didn’t need to look deeply into the cop’s frantic brown eyes to know he wouldn’t hear him. So, he just left the conversation there to focus instead on the brunette man’s pants.

I’ll give you this, officer. You’re pretty impressive so far. He thought when he allowed himself to drink in the tent pitched in Katsuya’s professional gray slacks due to the Nekomata’s charm attacks. Actually, the fact you’re still conscious after three marin karins is impressive too. Baofu continued to think. Though, he didn’t verbalize the partial praise, last thing he wanted was the cop being able to recall his words once the madness of lust faded. So, he kept his mouth shut as he undid Katsuya’s pants and tugged down his plain blue boxers. “Of course your boxers are just one boring ass color. Your favorite is probably beige.” Baofu snorted, mostly to himself before he used a bit of his spit as lube. His only response being a low groan that bubbled up out of the brunette when his palm met the overly sensitive skin of his erection. Yet, that didn’t bother the taiwanese man as he sat beside the cop on the cold bench and set to work. Honestly, he sort of preferred how Katsuya’s mind was little more than desperately horny mush. He was less likely to bring up some annoying law to dissuade the hacker’s slow strokes. Under the spell of a demon’s charm? The detective’s only reaction to the friction, was to whine and rock his hips into Baofu’s hand. No scolding in sight.

The usually stiff, strict police officer was, instead, quick to devolve into a complete mess for the hacker. All it took was a firm grip, slow strokes, and occasional breaks to rub small circles into the brunette’s tip. That was it. With the bare minimum of friction along Katsuya’s throbbing length, the mafia hunter had the tall man a mess of pants, moans, and thoughtless attempts to thrust into his hand and encourage him to speed up. You’re so fucking lucky we’re on a time crunch. Or I’d torment you for hours.

Regardless of that thought, he put his hand over Katsuya’s mouth and picked up the pace. With a tighter grip, faster movements, and louder whines and moans as a reward. The closer position more than small enough to let the hacker smell the geranium and cinnamon of Katsuya’s cologne on his too-warm skin while the brunette writhed in desperation, but Baofu ignored that. He pointedly kept his focus on his hand and not the ball of warmth that slowly built up in his own gut with each mewl and thrust to chase a release from the demon’s magic.

A release that thankfully wasn’t far away, because Baofu didn’t need a boner of his own after the cop came undone completely onto the locker room’s floor. The detective had the excuse of a Nekomata having cursed him, Baofu didn’t.

[yacinthemorning]

Mother Hen

Chapter 6 of 6

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Summary: 5 times Jimmy was almost the mom friend, if not for his other quirks.

Ships: Jimmy/Tango (Ambiguous)

Warnings: Fire, Temporary Death

Not a day into the latest one of Grian’s life games Tango had died.

It was, to be frank, embarrassing.

Then, he felt a tug on his chest and someone shouting, “What happened, Tango?” and was reminded that this time he had a soulmate. A soulmate he had yet to meet, one he had just killed.

Well, now it was just humiliating. 

The blazeborn rolled out of the tree and onto the ground, scanning for the other person. “Are you here?” He asked until he spotted two very ruffled yellow wings stretch out among the canopy. Jimmy hopped down, landing harder than Tango thought he intended. Tango chuckled, his voice breaking. “Oh, hi, hiii. Ain’t that a- a weird coincidence, huh?” He let out a deep sigh. “Oh, Jimmy, I’m so sorry.” Of course it had to be someone he barely knew.

Jimmy’s hands went to his hips. For a moment Tango felt like a scolded child. “It’s fine, I’m not mad, but… What happened? Take me through it.”

And so, Tango explained- or, tried to. His words spilled out like a waterfall and he wasn’t too sure of their coherency. Maybe in hopes of getting the point across a bit better he attempted to re-enact the moment of his death. He thought he did a pretty good job with the sound effects. At least when they weren’t interrupted by goats. Jimmy’s expression slowly morphed into concern as he listened, his wings pulling tensely to his back. When Tango pretended his claws were a zombie’s teeth he caught the avian’s hands lurch forward, before he realized and folded them under his arms, face dusted pink.

“And then, yeah.” He sighed, patting his own shoulder. “The old creeper from behind trick.”

“Oh my gosh.” Jimmy groaned, hanging his head. “Okay, well… It’s okay. I need to try and get my stuff back before-”

“Oh no, I have no idea where I was!” Tango finally realized. “I just lost everything!” Sparks leapt out of his tail as it began to swish against the grass. 

Jimmy’s mouth fell open, gaping like a fish. Another “Oh my gosh” escaped him like a sigh. He began looking around, poking his head through the trees in all directions. “Dude. Okay well… oh, where was my stuff?”

“I don’t know!” Tango threw up his arms, joining the search. “Do you remember anything?”

“Uh.” Jimmy returned to pacing in the centre of the clearing, wings held up tense and fingers massaging his temple. “Ah, I…”

And then he made a sharp turn, just as Tango was jogging by. The two collided, Tango’s forehead smacking into the avian’s nose. Hands shot out to prevent them from falling, but it only succeeded in dragging both down.

A hysterical sort of laugh escaped Tango. In-between heaves he managed to get out, “We’re just running in circles!” What was wrong with them?

Jimmy stared at him like he was crazy for a moment, but he too devolved into giggles. “Tango! I just need to figure out the direction!”

“I’m sorry! Here.”

Tango helped his soulmate onto his feet, brushing away the dirt caught in his wings. Jimmy took over, pacing the clearing with a bit more clarity. “I think it was that way. So, let’s make a chest, and then I’ll go look for my stuff.”

“Right, yeah, sounds good.”

Jimmy hummed, already pushing through the branches of a tree to place a hidden chest. “Do you wanna come with me? Or you could stay here and start to gather resources.”

Ah. That was probably a good idea considering they lost at least half their things already. “Yeah, sure.” Any opportunity to make up for the mess he’d caused today. Continued making. “I can do that. I can totally do that. Meet back up here in an hour?”

Jimmy placed a hand on Tango’s shoulder and nodded. “Good Luck, then…”

And that was Tango’s first real impression of Jimmy Solidarity. Jimmy didn’t hide his disappointment particularly well, but he pushed past it and pulled them together. After two games of almost no interactions and his only info on the avian being his reputation of dying first, Tango wasn’t sure what he was expecting but it had not been that. And when he returned, having lost his things but walked off his frustration, it all just fell into place.

Tango didn’t know why, but things were just… easy. It was so easy to get excited over every new thing they accomplished on their homesteading quest. 

Jimmy would show up to a hideous box of birch and praise it to hell and back. “I love it, I’m not just saying that.” He said, leaping over the crafting table in the doorway. “I can’t believe you lied to me and said you weren’t a builder!” 

While Tango couldn’t agree less, he believed him. It was not the Mona Lisa. The ranch house was more on par with macaroni art, and Jimmy was proudly pinning it to the fridge.

He had a flare for surprises, too, sneaking up with an entire herd of cattle until Tango opened the door and burst with excitement.

“Look at you!” Tango said, awe stricken. “You have a beef army!” They marched like one.

Jimmy giggled, burying his face into the side of one’s neck. “I have a family!” He said - corrected. The cows seemed to agree, nuzzling up to him until he patted their brown fur. “Welcome to the family.”

Most importantly to a blazeborn like him, when they finally wrangled the cows into the house and both were vibrating with excitement, Tango – too caught up in the moment to remember they were at best acquaintances just a few hours ago and thus probably should have asked first – crushed the other in a spinning embrace and discovered Jimmy was indeed very huggable. His feathers were soft, insulating when they followed his arms and turned the hug into more of a cocoon. His face squished happily into Tango’s hair despite the lock threatening to flare, and his hold was enough that when his own feet hit solid ground again Tango was in the air instead.

It was so warm and comforting. Grounding, in a way Tango wouldn’t fully realize or appreciate until later when their hard work went up in flames. Maybe it could be forgotten among the antics and teasing, where Jimmy would fumble his way through impulsive decisions and theatrical anger, but that side of his rancher was always there, waiting for when it was needed most. 

It was easy to adore, easy to click into place with. Tango wasn’t completely sure why, when he was just an angry little redstoner who made a constant flow of terrible choices. Jimmy could probably get along with anyone with that winning personality. Tango was glad it got to be him for this game.

Tango was glaring down one of the goats when over the wall he heard Jimmy rambling to someone who only hummed back. He narrowed his eyes, pointed towards himself, then the goat, then at the ground of the pen, before jumping up to haul his upper body over the top of the wall. Jimmy and Pearl both were fluttering their wings at one another, Jimmy animatedly explaining their woes until he spotted Tango and waved him over.

“Tango! Pearl knows how to get a horn!”

“Oh, that’s great! Thanks so much, Pearlypop!”

Pearl nodded. “I just need some food first.”

Tango didn’t hesitate, pulling a quarter of a stack of steaks from his inventory and handing to the poor starving girl. Her eyes lit up, and she started to dig in even as she flew up onto the wall with Jimmy. The two avians really towered over everything from their perch, and Tango mentally sent his best regards to their older brother. No wonder Grian always placed himself on Scar and Mumbo’s shoulders…

“We’ve been trying for hours, do you know what’s wrong?” Jimmy asked, frowning down at the goats who had done nothing since he left. Tango shrugged, getting ready to take another headbutt. Pearl or no, Tango would figure this stupid goat thing out and get that horn for Jimmy.

Pearl started to explain, “Well, only blocks natural to their native biome can break their horns, so you probably need to replace that birch with stone or spruce or… Potentially dirt?” She seemed equally unsure. 

Well, dirt was by far the easiest of those to try. While he pulled a stack of dirt out of his inventory to help Pearl create the new wall, yellow wings flitted into the doorway of the ranch with a stack of cobble. Tango stared after Jimmy curiously for only half a second before Pearl’s continued explanation of how to get goats to charge.

Jimmy returned just in time to watch Tango barely jump out of the way of a headbutt. The goat slammed into the dirt wall, but no horn fell. They all deflated. “Aw, that was it.” Tango whined. “It didn’t work.”

“Looks like you’ll need stone, then.” Pearl sighed, then looked around. “Is there anywhere to cook some up?”

Jimmy beamed, “I got it! It should be about done.” He ran back into the house and appeared with stone. 

Tango let out a noise of approval. “Look at you, all on top of things!”

Jimmy’s feathers puffed out proudly as he laid down the stone. “Why don’t you show us how to do it properly, Pearl? I’m not sure Tango and I’s stomachs can take another headbutt.”

 She laughed but jumped down into the goat pit. “Sure, sure.”

And of course she gets it on the first try. Tango is pretty sure he sees the goat giving him a smug look, but Jimmy is too wrapped up in his excitement to notice, and Tango is too wrapped up in Jimmy’s excitement to care. He blows the horn, a melody yet unheard playing. All around them people reply.

Jimmy was so happy Tango was pretty sure he didn’t realize he’d ceased speaking English in exchange for elated trills. At least Pearl understood him, replying with subdued chirps. Tango just chuckled to himself, watching the canary hop around, wings vibrating, speaking with his sister, until their attention turned to Tango. He blinked, confused. They were still speaking birdy at him – now Tango was sure Jimmy just did not notice the switch in his brain was flipped – and seemed to be up to something. Well, as long as Jimmy had his horn, Tango was fine to go along with anything else.

What Jimmy was up to was getting another horn. He’d done it while Tango was distracted by Pearl, until he heard another high trill from his rancher and saw him holding a second horn. “Way to go, buddy!” Tango cheered, hopping down to congratulate him. 

Then the horn was pressed into Tango’s hands. A matching one to Jimmy’s own. Jimmy barely managed to speak out a little countdown for them, and they didn’t quite match them up perfectly, but that didn’t matter. Tango vaguely heard Pearl chuckling behind them while they cheered and hugged and blew the horns once more.

It wasn’t all great. Grian decided it would be funny to tease his brother’s obsession by using their horn’s unique sound to exclude them. Jimmy didn’t seem to mind nearly as much as he dramatized, though. A snicker broke up his protests while Grian paraded around them as if he’d won something. 

And when they got home, the canary held up their horn with a grin. “It’s the team rancher horn now, then!” He said. “Just ours. So we always know where each other are.”

Tango thought he liked the sound of that quite a lot.

-

A bit too fittingly, Jimmy found his soulmate in death.

And. honestly, he was less than pleased. If not for the shock of the situation Jimmy might have done quite a lot more yelling. How could someone be so negligent with not only their own life, but their soulmate’s life?

Well the answer to that was apparently a creeper falling directly on top of them, as Tango had explained. Actually hearing and seeing the blazeborn helped calm Jimmy greatly before he could do or say something he’d regret, too. That didn’t make the situation any more ideal. But they picked up the pieces – well, picked themselves up and collected new pieces – and tried to make it work.

To his credit, Tango did his level best to immediately make up for his mistake. While Jimmy trapesed about searching for supplies that had already despawned and venting to any friend who would listen, Tango had collected plenty of resources. Maybe not as much as before, certainly not much iron at all, but it was something. 

It was enough to make himself some leg armour and boots, and when he discovered Jimmy in a cave with nothing but a shield, he didn’t hesitate. There was a clunk and clatter and then Jimmy had boots being pressed into his hands.

“If you die, I die.” Tango shrugged with a grin. “Now we’re both equally protected.”

You would think Jimmy was the one blown up with how quickly Tango appeared out of nowhere every time Jimmy found himself in even the mildest of precarious situations, honestly. Just dropping everything to come find him and make sure he was okay, that there was nothing Jimmy needed. Not that Tango even had things to give, but Jimmy caught him searching for those non-existent things, quick to mention he needed things for Jimmy when they went trading. 

It wasn’t quite coddling, but Tango didn’t even give Jimmy the chance to wonder if he could rely on his soulmate. It made the lies Bdubs tried to tell him later all the funnier.

Next came the base. Despite the time of day and precariousness of their situation it was… enjoyable. Easy, even. Like birthday shopping. Tango was remarkably agreeable to anything Jimmy wanted, only offering additions to his suggestions. 

“Here’s good.” Jimmy finally decided, holding his arms open to the small jungle cliff as he turned to Tango. 

His soulmate gave him a giant grin and a big thumbs up, as if it was a goldmine and not just another random patch like the rest. “So, what are you thinking of making? You have any ideas, or…”

“I dunno.” Jimmy admitted, brows furrowed. He examined the trees, looking for some sort of inspiration. “I guess we could just make a shack to-”

“To shack up in!” He giggled.

Sweet Void, not even Martyn would make a dad joke that lame. Jimmy just shook his head, smiling to himself. “Well, I’m not a builder at all, Tango, so-”

“Oh no, you’re not the builder?”

“No- wait.” Jimmy’s eyes went wide. “Are you not the builder?” Truth be told, he just assumed all the hermits were amazing builders.

“I’m not the builder!” Tango panicked, then chuckled. “Jimmy, I think we might be living in a dirt hut.”

“Gosh…” They were going to be a bigger mess than he thought, weren’t they?

Their wallowing was interrupted by a chorus of horns that echoed across the world, taunting them. Jimmy’s feathers ruffled, pouting up at the sky. Tango let out a whine. “They never stop!”

“We’re getting that horn as soon as possible.” The avian asserted to little resistance.

“Yeah, absolutely. I need one as soon as possible.” He said, pausing only briefly as another round was blown. A wide grin and wiggling eyebrows were shot Jimmy’s way. “I have horn envy!”

He took every good thing he said back. Jimmy was going to die before the second day, actually, and it would be all Tango’s fault.

Of course, he didn’t and it wasn’t. He also found out Tango lied right to his face about being a builder. Apparently, when a Hermit said they weren’t a builder, what they meant was they were not a Scar-level capital ‘B’ Builder who changed the landscape of architecture with every new build. Or maybe it was just a Tangoism. Either way, he made his awareness known, and they agreed Tango would work on the ranch while Jimmy went looking for iron. What he came back to was mayhaps not the prettiest house, but it was certainly theirs, better than Jimmy could have done, and that was more than enough.

“It’s a box.” Tango insisted with a nervous chuckle.

“No, it’s good!” Jimmy insisted even harder. “I can’t believe my man said he couldn’t build.”

The blazeborn’s tail curled around itself. Flickers leapt off it and his hair as he tried to hide in the collar of his vest. He didn’t say anymore, though, so Jimmy moved on, almost giddy as he pulled the bucket from his inventory.

“Hey, I have something.”

“What?” Tango then gasped, throwing out his arms. “You got it!” He cheered. “You go out, and you come back with goods! Well done! This is exactly what I like to see, partner!”

A shudder ran through Jimmy’s wings until they were fluffed up. He could feel his cheeks burning but he managed to puff up his chest. A happy squeak from the man made his entire display crumble into a fit of giggles, though, and long claws buried themselves in Jimmy’s hair.

Jimmy in fact found himself on the end of a complete onslaught of compliments and praise and pats on his back and hands ruffling his hair and- It was almost too much, overwhelming. But it made him feel like he could do anything if he tried, and that someone would be there to help when he did.

“I’ve never been more proud of someone in my life.” Tango had said later, running over to the barn where Jimmy was putting Oreo away in order to scoop the avian up into a hug. It couldn’t be true, objectively. But Tango sounded so sure, Jimmy believed it anyways. It was easy to believe when Tango said it.

-

“Tango!” Jimmy’s voice pierced through the flaming walls. “Tango, don’t die!”

Flames that were not his own bit into his clothes and skin, and Tango had to finally accept that the house fire was too much for even him.

“Tango?” The avian’s voice warbled with fear. Tango followed after it to a collapsing window, and leapt out, hitting the ground harder than he should with their damage. 

A bucket of water cascaded over him, then he was dragged up onto his feet and brought away from the flaming home. Jimmy patted him down, concern knitting his brows together. “Are you alright?”

“Scar…” Was all Tango could hiss. 

Bdubs, his mind corrected.

“What did you say to Scar?” Scott asked from… somewhere… Was Scott there?

Jimmy let out a whimper in response. “I took his horse, that’s it.”

A chorus of ‘oh’s and ‘why would you do that’ echoed across the still-smoldering ranch. 

“That doesn’t mean you burn down someone’s home!” He tried to defend himself but only received disagreement in return. Another growl ripped from Tango’s throat at them all when Jimmy’s expression contorted to guilt. They were the victims, here, couldn’t they feel even a bit of pity?

His mind flung him in all directions, memories mixing with the present. He hissed something to Etho that may or may not have actually come out comprehensible. Etho chuckled, but whatever he said in the present mixed indistinguishably with the past. It only seemed to distress the avian, who pulled him away from the other players. 

The world was blocked out by a cocoon of feathers. Shaky hands rubbed circles into his forearms, slowly moving up to cup his face and force him to look away from his memories and at Jimmy instead. “Snap out of it, Tango!” He begged, partly cut off by a trill. “Snap out of it.”

Tango latched onto Jimmy’s arms, evening out his breathing. Jimmy looked just as frazzled, but he continued to force out soothing coos.

Somewhere beyond the protective yellow wall the others began to quip. “I did like our little neighbourhood watch.”

One wing fell so they could listen. Tango continued to focus on Jimmy, and so Jimmy continued to murmur. “Look, the ‘R’ survived.” He tried to reassure, fingers massaging into the side of Tango’s scalp until he nodded in acknowledgement and whispered it back.

“They literally came and accused us of killing their goats, and we still came to save them.”

“Oh, they accused you, too?”

Sparks flew from Tango’s tail once again. He whipped around to the gossiping neighbours. “Well someone killed our goats!” He snapped. They couldn’t wait until the embers on their house were out before complaining about them?

Jimmy flared out his wings before any more arguments could start up, stepping away from Tango to address the whole crowd. “No, no. We really appreciate the community watch. I know we- Tango’s- he’s having a moment, but we appreciate you for coming to help-”

“Help!” Tango growled. “It’s burnt to the ground!” Scott and Cleo could have been right on their heels if they really wanted to be. Joel and Etho were apparently close enough to see it! Martyn was within earshot of the ranch, for goodness sake-

But Jimmy was immediately surrounded by the others, demanding this and that as reward. Tango let out a screech, trying to release some of the frustration building in his chest. The world was turning red.

Then suddenly Etho was beside him, chuckling. “I think you need to express yourself physically, Tango.”

He was so right. 

Flames curling in the corner of his vision, Tango let out a diabolical chuckle and went. Those pandas were dead, and maybe also the keep, and hopefully also Scar. Grian too, for good measure. Why not the whole corner of the map? He heard others behind him, following him, laughing, asking if he – Tango! A blazeborn! – needed a flint and steel. 

He turned around briefly to tell them as such, and apparently that was his mistake. The red tint in his vision was replaced by an impenetrable yellow in every direction. Once again he was walled in, the little soothing noises and gestures returning. They only briefly stopped when Jimmy’s own façade finally cracked to show his frustration at something – or maybe everything – the others said, his wings flitting down so he could scold them. “Stop it right now, leave him be! You just want to see destruction!” 

For once they listened, and Tango’s world returned to being just the two of them. Truthfully, he could already feel his rage giving way when Jimmy continued. “They won’t get away with doing this, okay?” He promised. “But Let’s go calm down and think about this first. We’re all friends here, you know he didn’t mean it to really hurt. It’s a game, remember? Let’s not do anything while angry you might regret later.”

With a final, deep, smouldering sigh, Tango nodded. “Yeah. You’re right.” Of course Jimmy was right.

Jimmy smiled. “We’ll get him back, I promise. We’ll think of something more clever than just burning everything.”

“But I like burnificating things.” He grumbled, but it was playful. His tail curled around his ankle when Jimmy laughed.

He really won the soulmate jackpot. 

-

“Did you get it?”

Jimmy paused, sucking in a terrified breath at the sudden words. If Tango was speaking, though, that meant it was safe, right? He turned to his rancher, pulling out the chest plate they had just swiped, proudly holding it out. “It’s right here.”

“Nice! It looks like decent enchanting, too.” Tango patted the diamond armor, then raised it up to pat Jimmy’s head as well. “Good job, little buddy! Let’s get you home.”

Jimmy squeezed his eyes shut, partly instinctively to keep the ruffled hair out of his eyes, and partly to hold himself back from some noise that would most certainly be embarrassing. His energy instead went to his wings, which fluttered, and heels, which bounced in lieu of room to properly hop in the cramped tunnels. For a hot moment he just basked in the bit of praise. “… Okay.” He remembered to reply.

Tango moved up the ladder first with a soft chuckle. It would be a long climb up. “I gotta say,” He started. “I’m proud of you. I’m really proud of you.”

“Yeah?” Jimmy beamed. Maybe he was being a bit too self indulgent with his soulmate’s simple praise.

“Yeah. You have, um, a bit of a reputation for not lasting this long. But-!” He put out his had before Jimmy could say anything. “You’ve been careful and worked hard. You’ve really turned things around. I’m proud of you!”

Jimmy ducked a little, in case the blazeborn looked down in time to see Jimmy’s doofy smile. “Well.” He managed to reach up high enough to give a pat on the back. “It’s really all thanks to you, really.” His words came out far softer than he intended.

Tango let out a giggle, “What you talking about? I’m the one that got you explodificated!”

“No, that’s…” He let out a little frustrated noise. Honestly, Tango was such a hypocrite. Handing out praise like candy, all the while refusing to take a single compliment. “That was way at the start, back when nobody had anything.”

“True, true.” Tango hummed in that appeasing way. 

Jimmy rolled his eyes, then reached out with one of his wings to lightly smack Tango on the back of the head. It got a yelp and a betrayed pout, but Jimmy only returned it with a playful glare. “It is true, don’t say it like that.”

Tango snickered, returning to climbing. “Yes, dear.”

Jimmy smiled. “… Tango?”

“Hm?” The blazeborn’s tail flicked in acknowledgement.

“Thank you.”

A pot probably shouldn’t call a kettle black, after all.

[inaris-mage-of-storms]

This whole saga begins with this post.

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Content warnings for perceived rejection, misunderstandings, and self-depreciating thoughts. If you struggle with similar issues or are in a bad headspace, consider skipping this one.

--

With a twitch of his elytra Scar swooped lower and banked to come around to the back of Grian's base, grinning and clutching the creeper hiss horn tighter in his hand. He could see a glimpse of his target's head bent over a multitude of chests, Grian's attention held by whatever he was searching for. As Scar landed on the planks as quietly as he could, he heard indistinct words from someone in a voice that wasn't Grian's. Two victims for the price of one? Even better.

" - ust don't put me with Scar, please."

Scar froze in place behind a column, moving further behind it as Grian turned his head to the side to look at the communicator laying on top of another chest.

"Are you sure?" came Scott's voice over the communicator speakers. "Like - to clarify, are we talking 'I'd rather be with anyone else ell-oh-ell jay kay'? Or are we talking - "

"No, this is a serious, official request," said Grian, pulling what sounded like a handful of bamboo out of the chest and contemplating it for a moment. "I can't do it, Scott. It's different being around him here at home, but after all of...that..."

Oh. Scar slipped the goat horn into his inventory and leaned heavily against the column while Grian went back to rummaging, not trusting himself to be able to get back up if he let himself slide to the floor. He knew it was something he would have to face sooner or later - had known it for a while. But sensing Grian's steadily increasing withdrawal from him and preparing himself for it didn't compare to actually facing it.

"I understand," said Scott sympathetically. "Are you sure that will affect MCC, though? You might be an absolute menace, Grian, but you've always been good at putting emotions aside for the sake of professionalism."

"Yeah, I - It's just getting to be too much, you know? And what if Build Mart gets chosen? You know how I am with that. And I was watching his debut. I know he thinks he wants to play it with me on his team, but god, Scott - "

"Ouch, yeah. Well, all of the requests are confidential," said Scott, "so if you're really certain. Is this a permanent request, or...?"

Grian closed the chest lid with a sigh. "I don't know," he said, and as hard as Scar was finding it to breathe and ignore the painful tightness in his ribcage, he didn't miss how sad Grian sounded - or the welling desire to drop everything and comfort him, to find any way he could to bring a smile to Grian's lips. "Let's call it a standing request for now."

"Got it," answered Scott. "So then! Any requests for who you do want?"

Scar snuck to the edge of the floor and stepped off, waiting until the last possible moment to activate a rocket and praying he was far enough away for Grian to not hear it. Of course you've gone and finally driven him away, he thought ruefully. Grian's amazing at MCC, he doesn't deserve having to babysit someone who can't even follow a template without choking under pressure. And he did just have to put up with my stupidity against his will in the most recent Life game, and blamed himself for losing when it was clearly because I can't...I can't...

His train of thought crumbled as he landed in the workspace under the theme park roads, all sense of coherency devolving into a vortex of every mistake he had ever made, every time his energy had been too much to handle, every disappointment he had subjected the people he loved to because of his own incompetence.

Through blurred vision Scar made his way to the makeshift sleeping quarters in his workspace and curled up under the blankets. Please don't stop looking at me, he had almost asked Grian in another world through a haze of pain and healing potions. He grimaced at the recollection of such a selfish request, before shoving it aside and seeking out the reprieve of slumber instead.

[skellebonez]

Tumblr Messed Up Fill #1

So Tumblr did a BIG OLD OOPS and published a bunch of my unfinished drafts that I left in my queue at 1 PM... when I set it to 1 AM and intended to finish a couple and then change the time again.

LUCKILY I DIDN’T HAVE THE ENTIRE FILLS IN THE QUEUE AND JUST BITS I ADDED IN TO HOLD SPACE. So... I guess this is how we’re doing this! @winterpower98​ here’s some Mentor Swap AU Shadowpeach!

How did you get that scar?/That is not a good hiding spot.

It had been scheduled far in advance and Wukong should have remembered that this was going to happen. The Weather Station needed to let it rain sometimes! It was good for the environment! Good for nature! But Wukong was Wukong and when he trained with Xiaotian for as long as he did he had a tendency to forget the unimportant things like “scheduled downpours” and “when training is actually supposed to end”.

So by the time he managed to crash land a foot away from Mei’s front door after pogo sticking his way off of Mount Huaguo he looked like he’d been dropped into the ocean.

“Cold-cold, cold and wet!” He yelped, shoving the staff back into his ear and trying to hold his jacket over his head as best he could, which did just as much good as it did during the ride. Which was “barely anything”. “Ah shit, it’s cold why can’t they make the rain not COLD!?”

He continued into the building, shuddering as he felt rain water seeping through every bit of fabric he wore, even his shoes the traitors. He immediately started ripping off his shirt, at the very least wanting to get some of the drenched clothing off him, and he froze when he heard a yelp from the other side of what should have been a very empty entry way given Mei was supposed to be out of the house.

A very familiar yelp.

“Why aren’t you are your own house!?” The voice yelled, and as Wukong pulled his shirt over his head he found the voice’s own staring at him with wide eyes alight with a mix of confusion and horror.

“UH, I think I should ask you that, Macaque!” He accused, turning sideways and walking backwards into the building with a raised eyebrow. “Why are you in Mei’s house? Are you hiding in Mei's house!? That is not a good hiding spot!"

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Monkey Boy?” Macaque said snarkily with a smirk.

“Monkie KID, and yeah, that’s why I asked,” Wukong snarked right back, holding his shirt and jacket out in front of him with a frown. “Also, you’re a monkey so...”

“Oh shut up.”

"And you look like you nearly drowned," Wukong chuckled, ringing his shirt out and pointedly not mentioning the blush he saw forming on the other's face. Yet. "It's raining cats and dogs and I’m pretty bad to, but you shouldn't be that bad."

"... don't laugh," Macaque grumbled, doing much the same to his scarf. "I was trying to get here when the rain was getting really bad and I... fell. Off the docks."

Wukong immediately burst into cackles.

“I told you not to laugh you asshole!” Macaque snapped, baring his teeth and trying to puff up his fur in annoyance but failing miserably with the sheer amount of water weighing him down. If anything it probably just made him look... adorably sad. Like a puppy. But a human sized monkey.

“I-I’m sorry!” Wukong held his sides, trying his very best to stop laughing. He also failed miserably, if not even more so than Macaque. “It’s just imagining you, YOU, falling off the docks? Just! You’re practically an acrobat! You’re usually way cooler than that!”

As Wukong continued to fail Macaque’s face softened as he stopped barring his teeth in warning and stared at the other young man.

“... you think I’m cool?” He asked softly, attempting to smooth down his fur and brush the water out of it.

“Kinda?” Wukong said with a half snicker, finally having himself under control. “Cool enough I guess.”

Macaque hummed, giving up on his attempts to dry off with a sigh. It was pointless to try to dry off with his fur like this, not without some kind of towel or brush. And he would be damned if he let Wukong let himself shake dry! That was not going to happen.

So instead he turned to the other, watching as he laid out his tip layers on his arm and turned around.

And something caught his eye.

Multiple somethings.

“How did you get that scar?”

Wukong tensed, not enough for him to stop moving but more than enough for Macaque to notice that he was walking away much slower than he needed to.

"Depends on which one you mean," he answered eventually. He reached up to pull on his hair, frowning as it dripped more water on him.  "Hold that thought until I come back."

And so he did. Macaque watched the other leave and stood in the open room, awkward and dripping sea and rain water all over Mei's floor.

He debated leaving. Just walking out the door and avoiding the awkward conversation that was sure to be leveled in his direction when the human returned, but before he could even make the decision to decide on an option something brought and green was lobbed at his head and wrapped around his face.

“WHAT IN THE-”

“Towel off before Mei gets angry we both tracked in water,” Wukong said, mischievous chuckle resounding through the air before Macaque managed to unwrap the towel from his face. “I’ve got something else that’ll help out after.”

Macaque was going to ask what that something was before the words died in his throat, the sight before him making him pause in confusion and barely held back amusement.

“You have Monkey King themed PJs?” He asked, toweling off his head first. “At Mei’s?”

“Sometimes I stay over.” Was all Wukong said, shrugging as if it was nothing. “Considering you’re here and I don’t see signs of a break in I assume those plum PJs in the same closet are yours.”

“I DON’T HAVE PAJAMAS HERE I DON’T STAY THAT OFTEN!” Macaque snapped, and his face flushed a deep red in embarrassment before he saw Wukong’s victory smirk. “... you made that up to make me slip that I’ve been here before.”

“And you took it hook, line, and sinker,” Wukong said playfully, grabbing the monkey demon’s arm and using a second towel he had to dry it off. “I wasn’t kidding about the PJs though.”

“O-oh...” was all Macaque could reply with as the information slowly sunk in before he ripped his arm away. “I can do that myself!”

“Then do it and come inside!”

~

Macaque was... mostly dry after a couple minutes, enough for Wukong to drag him into the bathroom and instruct him to change and use the blow dryer he has shoved into his hands while he mopped the floor. And as much as Macaque disliked the noise... he couldn’t argue that the warm air of the device was a welcome change from the icy seawater against him.

He may have looked like an extra puffed up fur ball when he was done and refused to come out until he at least had the PJs (short sleeved and indeed covered in plums) on to hide the worst of it.

Didn’t stop Wukong from devolving into cackles at his expense once again.

“Hold on, let me do something,” Wukong offered, and guided him to sit down on the couch sideways, situating behind him with the other pulled against his chest and a comb in hand. “At least I can help with your hair... if it counts as hair.”

“... I don’t know if it does,” Macaque replied, finding himself at a loss for what to do and say in this situation.

They were enemies, right?

Shouldn’t Wukong... be chasing him out of the building?

Now sitting him down to- OH NO!

“ACTUALLY WA-”

Macaque froze as Wukong’s fingers brushed against his scalp and the teeth of the comb brushed through his hair, far more gentle than Macaque could remember anyone touching his hair before, and he went limp in Wukong’s arms like putty.

“Knew that’d get ya,” he felt Wukong say as much as he heard him say it, and the hands and comb continued through his hair and fur and he couldn’t even muster up any coherent words to snark back at him. Just a frustrated grumble. “Xiaotian does this to me a lot. And to his monkeys. So I figured this would be... ya know, nice for you.”

They stayed like that for a good while, Wukong brushing his fingers and the comb through puffed up fur and pulling out tangles Macaque didn’t even know he had on the back of his neck. It felt... strange. To trust someone that you spent so much of your time fighting against, flirting with awkwardly in the midst of battle, never thinking that the two of you would just sit and do anything calmly together.

But here they were. On Mei’s couch. Macaque feeling a purr rumble up in his chest as Wukong groomed through his hair and fur in a gesture he clearly admitted he knew the implications of.

“They’re from before,” Wukong said after a while, after he rested his head on Macaque’s shoulder and started working through the fur on his arms. “Before Red took me in... back before I had the staff to fight with.”

And as much as Macaque wanted to ask, and if he really tried he knew he probably could, he chose not to push it when he heard the way Wukong’s tone changed. Something equally nostalgic and melancholy.

“I think they make you look cool too,” was what he said instead.

“... We’re both pretty cool.”

[from-a-reckless-writer]

part i 

She comes to with a pounding in her head and the feeling of something being lifted off her chest. 

Literally. 

In seconds, her whole body feels lighter. The next thing she registers is a hand in hers. When she stirs, the hand around her tightens and she hears Brainy’s voice, “Director—”

The moment she opens her eyes, she is met with Alex Danvers; a stethoscope slung around her neck and a small flashlight on hand. In her periphery she confirms that it was indeed Brainy, holding her hand. 

“Lena, Lena, look at me. You’re at the DEO, you’re safe, you-”

“Alex, I know the drill, this is—  what? My 91st time now?” She says dryly as her hand slowly slips out of Brainy’s and her fingers massage her temples; eyes clenched shut. Alex visibly relaxes in relief, “Good. Thank fuck your sarcasm’s still intact,” she says, “But I still have to check you, alright?”

Lena nods and she guesses Kara most likely had harassed her sister just to get her hooked in. If Alex mumbling “-so damn stubborn all the damn time…” under her breath was any indication. 

She’s well aware of the other person in the bed next to hers. The one, that is now also starting to stir into consciousness. Lena had just noticed that J’onn and Nia are in the room as well, near Kara’s bedside. 

She wants to ask how she got here, how Kara found her, how the fuck did a Black Mercy get her? But everything is spinning and her coherence is slowly devolving to exhaustion. Her brain was pushed to its limits with that illusion. 

Which makes panic flare in the back of her head thinking about how Kara had seen her ideal world. 

A world, that her mind had fucking decided should center around her ex. Her ex who just happens to be a superhero. A superhero that pulled her out of her own delusions. 

Oh God, Lena thinks she’s going to throw-up. Alex takes one look at her face and immediately shoves an empty sterile container to her. She dry-heaves unto the bucket as Brainy rubs her back and holds her hair. 

“Fuck,” she whispers as Alex hands her a tissue to wipe her face. “Your vitals are fine. Your brain activity spiked for a few seconds there. But you got out at just the last minute-”

“What the fuck happened, Alex?”

She asks as she tries to sort out all her feelings long enough for Alex to give her a full explanation. 

But it isn’t Alex who answers her. 

“I found you.”

The three words are bullets flying across the room directly shot at Lena.

“Unconscious. On the floor. Black Mercy attached to your chest. That’s what fucking happened.”

Kara sounds like shit.

Was her first thought when she heard Kara speak. She guesses she looks like shit as well, but Lena can’t be certain. Her back was to her as Nia removes the wiring still wrapped around her. Her voice was firm, but Lena knew better. She knows Kara; knows she never really swears; knows when and where Kara uses the Supergirl voice. When she’s scared and she doesn’t want anybody to know. 

“Your pulse was so weak. I- I could barely hear it.”

This second statement is in contrast to Supergirl’s venom. This time words catch in her throat and Lena is fucking thankful that Kara’s back was to her. Because she knows she can’t handle those eyes. But before she could answer, Alex starts to speak, eyes briefly darting to Kara.

Lena doesn’t know whether she should be thankful for the interruption or not. 

“Which is why,” Alex cuts in and making sure to stress her next words, checking that Lena is listening, “I need you to stay here till we find out who did this. And as your doctor I’m saying you need at least 12 hours of rest.”

“What? No, somebody give me my phone. I need to call Jess,” she protests and Alex looks like she’s about to give Lena a piece of her mi—

“Are you kidding me right now? I found you on the floor, thinking you were dead, pulled you out of a parasitic trap and you want to go back to L-Corp? To what? Get killed again?”

This time, Kara’s two steps away from her bed and fuming. It makes Lena...feel...things.

“I have to call Jess—”

“Do you not get it? I spend my days trying so hard not to listen,” She grits out, “ To not to check in on you every single second of every day and then the one time—” Kara’s conviction crumbles, voice breaking, eyes shining.

 “And then,” she falters, voice heavy with emotion and tries to control herself.

“The one time, the one fucking time I decide to break my own rule, what do I hear? I hear nothing, Lena.”

The last part is a whisper. She’s shaking and all eyes are on them now.

“Do you know why? Because your heart-rate was so slow that I couldn’t pick up on it.”

Kara looks like she’s two inches away from imploding. Lena’s heart is pounding and the room falls silent and it feels like it’s just the two of them in the room having a staredown. 

“I— I’m sorry. I—”

I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to care. I’m sorry. 

“Thank you for saving me,” she voices out instead in that calm methodical way she uses when talking in the lab. Amazed at how she sounded because she herself is also less than two inches away from a complete meltdown. 

Kara’s shoulders visibly sag as she holds back tears. Lena knows she should probably say more but... she doesn’t really know what to say. 

She was still processing everything. 

It was so vivid that Lena was half-expecting to see a ring on her finger once she looks down, a stubborn part of her brain insisting that there’s a matching one in a chain around Kara’s neck.

Before Kara can say another emotional heavy statement, Lena turns to Alex instead, “Fine,” she says, agreeing to Alex’s previous order. 

“But I can’t stay here for 12 hours. And also, I need my phone, my tablet and my assistant. I’m helping in the investigation,” she says leaving no room for argument.

Alex looks like she might agree but Kara speaks up again.

“No, no. No, you’re not going near that investigation and you’re staying the 12 hours here,” Kara grunts out, jaw-clenched as Lena looks at her with sharp eyes. 

“You have no right to decide that for me—”

“Not to mention we have to tal— “

They both spit at each other at the same time.

“We have nothing to talk about,” Lena objects and she knows how much of a lie that is, but Kara just won’t fucking back down. 

“Nothing?! You’re calling this nothing?! You’re calling the fact that your ideal world was us married, nothing? You’re telling me—” she trails off and scoffs, pinches the bridge of her nose in disbelief, “You’re unbelievable-”

That was what she meant when she said Kara was two inches away from imploding.

“Supergirl.”

J’onn’s voice seem to bring the both of them back to reality and Lena notices how heavy the air in the room has become, how Nia is standing stiffly at the side, how Alex’s eyes keep flicking between the both of them

“That’s quite enough from the both of you,” J’onn says and Kara whips around to face him, Lena was scared that she was going to deck J’onn for interrupting but Alex also intervenes. 

“J’onn’s right.” She puts a hand on her sister’s shoulder turning her away from J’onn. Looks like she had the same train of thought as Lena. 

“My patient needs her rest. So, all of you get out,” At which Nia nods at her with a sympathetic smile and then Brainy is hugging her whispering, “I’m glad you’re okay.” before leaving the room as well. 

“And that means you too,” Alex emphasizes at Kara, who looks like she’s going to shoot lasers out of her eyes at her sister for suggesting such an incredulous notion. 

But Kara takes a breath, gives Alex a hard look to which Alex merely raises a brow in challenge before taking a step back and speeding out of the room, not sparing Lena another glance. 

Once everyone is gone, Lena collapses back on the bed, letting out a heavy sigh. 

“She changed the timeline, you know. And reality too, I guess. Or at least she tried to.”

“What?”

“Before you two became a thing, before beating Leviathan,” Alex recounts,  “She tried to change the timeline to save your friendship.”

“I’m sorry- What?”

She’s sure she looks pretty absurd with the look on her face right now. Kara did what? Kara did that? How did she not know that? How did she not know Kara literally teared apart at space and time just for her? 

“She struck a bargain with a Fifth-Dimensional imp so she can fix everything. Said she’d rather change reality than face the possibility of having to fight you.”

For a moment she feels she’s going to throw-up again. But then again, after what the both of them just went through, Lena’s not surprised. God knows the lengths she would go through for Kara.  

It feels even more visceral now, not to mention it was Alex who told her. 

“I don’t know what the hell happened between the two of you, but God, Lena she hasn’t been the same since. And I don’t really want to know what kind of bullshit the Black Mercy put you through, but I think both of you could really use their best friend right now.”

Alex sits at the side of her bed, putting a hand atop hers for a moment.

“Just think about it, while you rest,” Alex tells her, squeezes her hand and gets up again. 

“You can’t just tell me those kinds of things and expect me to rest,” Lena retorts, making Alex turn her head back to her. 

She’s glad that Alex doesn’t seem to pick sides. When the break-up happened she was expecting the DEO Director to turn up at her front step with a taser and point canons for breaking her sister’s heart. But Lena was surprised when Kelly turned up instead, telling her that Alex is with Kara, so she’s getting Kelly for the night.

The couple didn’t get anything from Kara or Lena that night, despite their various attempts at coaxing the truth out. The night was sobbed away or in Lena’s case, drank the night away; chugged enough wine that Kelly had forcefully pried the bottle from her hands. 

“Look, Lena, The two of you are really overdue for a talk.”

Alex's words bring her back to reality. She pulls a tablet out and Lena’s work phone is retrieved from her pocket. 

“So, talk,” Alex enunciates as she hands over the devices. 

“Because I am locking you here. No going to L-Corp, no trying to escape with Jess and no overworking till midnight. You get to call your assistant, tell her what happened and then you rest. That’s an order, got it?”

“Got it,” Lena grits out rolling her eyes, hiding the fact that she’s beyond warmed by the gesture. Alex merely shakes her head at her before stepping out. The door slides close behind her and Lena is finally left alone with her thoughts.

Alex has a point. Alex has a great point, her mind screams.

But...not ready, is an understatement. She is not ready to talk to Kara about the break-up, much less about why her Black Mercy induced dream is an overtly domestic version of their love story. 

She decides to file it under ‘Things For Later’ which is probably a bad idea. Her therapist would most likely tell her that. Then again, she doesn’t really think she’d be seeing her therapist any time soon. 

How does one unpack a whole alien parasite attack on your psyche in one session, anyway?

***

Alex finds her stood before ruined slabs of concrete. 

“Any updates?”

“We’re skip-tracing all employees from L-Corp between the graveyard shift and the morning shift.”

“Good, I have a feeling it was an inside job.”

Alex lets out an audible sigh. 

“Something you wanna say?” She says as cement crumbles under her fists and dust particles rain over her red boots. 

“Talk to her. “

Kara snorts. 

“You say that as if I haven’t tried talking.”

Alex puts a hand on her shoulder stopping her from launching another punch. 

“Really talk to her this time,” her sister stresses the words in that classic Alex Danvers’ ‘I’m-serious-so-you-better-fucking-listen’ way. 

She lets the words sit in the forefront of her mind, shoulders dropping, fists and arms following suit. 

“We were married,” She whispers and it takes two seconds for it to register to Alex before she steps closer, an ‘Oh, Kara.’ slipping past her lips. 

“We were married and happy. So happy. It felt so real, Alex, it felt so re—” 

Sobs choke her and Alex closes the gap and she lets herself be tugged in a tight, tight hug. Alex rubs comforting circles on her back as Kara’s chest heaves and tears pour. 

The thing about it was, she didn’t even spend more than one minute in that fantasy world, yet her brain acts as if she’s lived that life. As if she didn’t drop smack right in the middle of a stranger’s bedroom and the first thing she saw was a doppelganger of herself and her ex. In bed. Together. 

It was as if everything came to her in one terrifying moment of clarity. Boots in the corner. Cape haphazardly slung. Lena’s work laptop. Chew toys for dogs. Scattered Science books, then— 

Golden rings, on a finger, in a chain.

Mating bands around wrists.

Wedding portrait. Weddin— 

It all hits her at once faster than a whiplash and harder than a superpowered punch; knocking the  wind out of her lungs, until she realizes she was gasping. 

“Lena, we have to go, please. Please believe me, this isnt-” 

“Real. I know-”

“What’s your surname?”

“Luthor.”

Just like you promised. Promised. Promised. 

Always. 

Alex squeezes tighter and Kara is pulled back from the depths. 

Her sister lets her go and steps back a bit to cup her face in her hands; snotty nose, sniffles and all. 

“Hey, look at me. That wasn’t real. And I know how bad you want it to be real. But Kara, nothing will happen if the both of you keep pulling away from each other. Someone needs to take the plunge.”

“She doesn’t want me, Alex. She ended things.”

Alex takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, shakes her head and then lets it all out in one go. 

“Kara. I don’t really wanna say this to your face while you’re sobbing over me. But,” Alex lets out an exasperated sigh with a shake of her head and then lets out,  “Good fuck, that is the most stupid thing to come out of your mouth. I don’t know how to stress this enough but...her IDEAL world is the two of you playing house. What more do you need? She wants you.”

“But she-” 

Alex holds a finger up to stop her from talking. 

“Nope. No. Listen to me, you are being an idiot. Well, Lena is too. But we’re talking about you right now, so… again, you are being an idiot. Just— Talk to her, Kara. How many times do I have to say that?”

Kara goes from sobbing to shocked to skeptical in the few seconds that Alex was speaking. 

“I- I don’t know, Alex.”

“Kara, she wants you. She’s just scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“You won’t find out if you don’t talk to her.”

Well, that was a great response. 

Alex is hoping that it’s great enough of a response to convince her sister.

***

There’s a blue lump on the side of her bed. 

A blue lump with blonde hair?

Lena rubs the sleepiness off and slowly sits.

Kara, it was Kara. 

Kara was asleep, back hunched, head pillowed on folded arms on the side of her bed.

Lena immediately realizes the uncomfortable position she is in, not to mention the cape that is now roughly bundled at the back of the plastic chair. 

She carefully lays a hand on Kara’s shoulder and shakes her softly. 

“Hey, Kara, wake up, hey,” Lena mutters quietly. 

“Wha- Lena?” Kara startles awake and shoots up from her position.

“I- you looked like you were gonna have a back ache so I-uh,” Lena was grasping for words in that usual way she does when Kara’s around. 

“Here.” She pats the space next to her, “Come on, sit here, climb in. We uh- you’re right, we should talk, might as well do it while we’re both comfy, right?”

She attempts at lighthearted conversation, she already knows the next few minutes are going to be the most emotionally draining moments of her— their life. 

Kara hesitates a bit, before nodding and wordlessly hoisting herself on the bed. 

“So, do uh- do you wanna start or should I?”

Again, she was grasping for words. 

“Go ahead,” Kara says barely above a whisper, Lena was kind of hoping Kara would go first but well, here goes nothing. 

“Thank you for coming to get me, I wasn’t expecting you to come,” Lena confesses, she really was surprised when Kara—the real Kara— showed up to rescue her. 

“I’ll always save you, you know that,” Kara butts in, as if what Lena had said was the most ridiculous thing ever. She guesses it is, to Kara’s ears. She did promise always after all. 

“Yeah, I know I just— for a moment there I just thought...well, never mind what I thought honestly-”

“You thought what? That I don’t care about you anymore? That I won’t fly off the moment I sensed you were in danger?”

Well, she’s on fire today. 

“It’s not like that, you know that,” Lena protests but Kara interrupts again.

“It is like that. You thought just because we’re over I don’t give a shit about you anymore. You of all people, know I can’t—” Kara cuts herself off as if in pain, “I’ll always save you, Lena. Together or not. I care about you,” Kara utters, turning her head to meet Lena’s eyes before facing in front again. 

Lena feels like care is a placeholder for something both of them aren’t capable of saying at present. 

She doesn’t dwell on it too much because Kara is saying something again. 

“I think…” She begins with a voice full of an emotion Lena can’t name [read: don’t want to name.]

“I care about you a little too much and that...”

Lena holds in a breath. 

“And that scares you doesn’t it?” Kara finishes and she looks at her again but this time  around Lena’s cheeks are wet. 

Kara puts a hand atop hers and squeezes and the gesture pulls words from Lena’s throat. 

“You wanted everything so fast, Kara,” she whispers, not really trusting to increase the volume of her voice lest it shakes. 

“You were telling me all these grand plans of settling down and staying together and I was still having a hard time telling you ‘I love you’ and-” her voice breaks, “And even though, you kept saying it was okay, that you were just thinking out loud, I saw how hurt you were whenever I hesitated.”

Lena’s mind briefly flashes to all those nights spent with Kara, beside her and just feeling this massive fucking pressure of living up to what Kara wants. Shy I love you’s and fear, just so much fucking fear...and insecurities screaming at her that she isn’t what’s good for Kara. 

“I- I couldn’t give you what you wanted and I just kept thinking was it me you really wanted? Or was it this domestic bliss that you’ve conjured in your head? Something you can have with somebody else. And it just kept spiraling from there. Thinking somebody better can give you what you want, somebody who’s not tainted, somebody who you can be proud of, somebody who won’t feel so fucking scared of saying ‘I love you’.”

She was aware she was one breath away from sobbing and when Kara moved closer and softly said, “Oh Lena,”

The dam burst. 

“Oh, baby, come here, I’m sorry. Rao, I’m so sorry, I- I didn’t know I made you feel that way, I’m sorry,” Kara murmurs to her as she cups Lena’s cheek and uses her thumb to wipe tears. 

Lena’s eyes were so green at the moment and Kara has to remind herself that they still have a long way to go for tonight. 

“Look at me, I’m sorry I didn’t know, I’m sorry you felt pressured but Lena, there is nobody else I want. You are the one I want, hell I’m pretty sure every me out there in the multiverse is looking for their own Lena right now. You are the best I could ever have.”

The words hit Lena and it just makes her sob harder. Kara fully turns her body to the side to gather Lena in her arms and lets her sob into her neck. 

“I- I left because I thought I couldn’t be enough, I didn’t want to. But everything was happening so fast and you wanted so many things and I couldn’t give it to you and I felt like such a fucking failure,” Lena sobs out, words slightly muffled with how hard Kara is pressing into her. 

“Lena you are not a failure oh, come here. Listen to me, you’re not a failure, you’re not supposed to build your world around me okay? You do it for yourself. You are brilliant. You are not a failure and I am so so sorry that I made you feel that way.”

Kara rubs circles on her back and squeezes around her every so often. It feels like forever that they stayed that way. Kara whispering, “Shh, breathe, breathe with me,” and Lena sniffling into Kara and Kara just wrapping all around her and calming her. When Lena’s sobs start to subside and she feels confident enough in her ability to speak she slowly breaks away from Kara. 

“I’ve been going to therapy,” she begins, “It helped...a lot. Helped clear out a lot of things f-for me. And I think,” She pauses, “Kara, I- I also think you need it more than I do.”

At that Kara’s face scrunches up in confusion. 

“How so?”

“Remember when I told you you wanted so much so fast?”

Kara gives her a nod. 

“I think you were trying to run, darling.”

She knew she should be focusing on what Lena was trying to tell her but she can’t help the little flutter of her heart at the pet name. 

“Run? Run from what?”

“Kara,” Lena starts, unsure about how she should really go about all this.

“You went through hell and back trying to fix the universe, you watched another home of yours get erased from existence. And not to mention that before and during all of that, the two of us were fighting. And then to make things worse at the end of it all, you get ejected into a universe you barely know with my brother as its savior.”

Lena lays out all the facts methodically, slowly, carefully but just blunt enough to make Kara realize that all that trauma should not just be brushed aside.

“You went through a lot.”

A lot, doesn’t even begin to describe the enormity of everything the both of them went through. But Lena supposes they can unpack that another time. There’s a pause and Lena watches Kara take a breath.

“Kara, I think you jumped into a relationship with me because it made you feel good. It made you forget about all the recent hardships you just went through. And I guess maybe I did too, you know? We both just wanted to feel some crumb of peace, but God, did we go about it the wrong way.”

Lena watches her words sink in, how Kara stops, blinks slowly only to take a sudden breath as tears slowly track down her face. 

“I- No. I didn’t. No, you’re wro- Lena, I-” Kara fails to tie together a sentence as tears start to fall down. It’s easy when everything else is in your head, when you can replay memories and cover them in filters made by your own brain, but when someone else puts it on the screen for you? That’s a different matter altogether. Nobody had shown Kara the severity of her trauma before and now it’s taking its toll.

“Oh, Kara. Come here, come here,” Lena coos, this time it was her pulling Kara in. Kara melts into her and Lena feels the telltale signs of heavy sobs come through. 

“I don’t know- I-”

“Shh, it’s okay, Kara, it’s okay.” 

She lets Kara fall apart in front of her. She knows those tears are oceans of their own, those drops carry the memory of a fallen planet, an entire culture, stories, people, loved ones. Every drop is a person Supergirl had failed to save, another universe, another home. Every drop is every lie she ever told Lena and all of the pain there was when she was gone. 

“I’m sorry, Lena, I’m sorry.”

She can’t beg forgiveness from an extinct race or a wiped out universe but Lena? She could still have Lena. 

***

Alex finds them curled tightly together in the Med Bay come morning. She kind of wants to cry in relief at the sight. 

Finally, fucking finally. 

She doesn’t have the heart to bother them so she grabs them an extra blanket and tucks both in, exiting with a small smile to her lips. 

***

They both wake up to the sound of laughter, the perpetrators— a couple of low-rank agents— stop in the tracks at the sight of a disheveled Supergirl, scowling madly at them with one Lena Luthor tucked in her arms. 

“Uh- sorry, we’ll just uh-” 

The agents bolt out of the room immediately, letting Kara slump back into the pillow. 

“Hi,” Lena croaks out with a rough voice, eyes puffy from last night. 

Snippets from last night immediately flashing in Kara’s brain. 

Kara holding Lena. 

Lena holding Kara

Teary apologies

Catching-up on each other.

Talking till yawns interrupted their words. 

Kissing. 

More kissing. 

More kiss-

You get the picture. 

“Good morning,” Kara replies with a shy smile. 

“Is scaring agents one of Supergirl’s many talents?” Lena teases, as Kara scoffs fully turning unto her side to face Lena, hand casually brushing a stray strand of her on Lena’s face

“Serves them right for just walking in-” Kara stops mid-sentence, fingers freezing and her eyes turn hesitant, “Sorry, is this okay?”

Because even though last night had happened even though they’ve talked until words could no longer name the depth of their feelings and they turned to silence instead, Kara is still unsure. Hesitant. Wary of giving too much too soon or asking for too much too soon.

But the most difficult part is over and they both realize this as the sun from outside filter through the many wide windows of the DEO, as Lena’s next words ring about in the warmth of the morning.

“Kara, it’s okay,” Lena answers her, catching Kara’s frozen hand and leaning into the touch, pressing closer to Kara’s face, noses touching, lips a breath apart. 

“In fact, it’s very much okay.”

.

.

.

.

.

.

The first tell was the lack of a body next to her. The second was the freezing cold. Her bed was almost never cold these days. She’s grown used to sharing her bed with a Kryptonian heater, and so, to wake up from a nightmare alone in bed was now an unusual occurrence. Unusual nough to make her panic. 

She sits up, disoriented from her nightmare. Lena groggily registers a low melodic humming crackling from the baby monitor on her nightstand. 

“Kara,” she whispers into the quiet of the room, “Please come back to me.” 

The humming from the monitor begins to sound distant as it gets louder to Lena’s ears; drifting nearer and nearer to the bedroom. 

The door opens and Kara strolls in, messy bun, sleepy voice and all. In her arms a squirming, kicking, sniffling, very much awake bundle fits.

“She doesn’t want to sleep, I tried everythi-” Kara whines and then stops as she takes in Lena’s racing heartbeat, shaking lips and shining eyes. 

“Oh no, did you have a nightmare? I’m sorry, I-”

“It’s okay, Kara. Just— Come here? Please?”

Kara shuffles quickly towards the bed; Lena lifts the comforter, making room, the bed dipping as her wife climbs in.

“You okay?” she asks, once she’s settled down next to Lena. She continues rocking her arms as an attempt to get their daughter to sleep for the nth time tonight. Her wife doesn’t still doesn’t answer her, although she doesn’t miss how Lena slightly calms at her presence.

“Lena, hey, you with me?”

“Kara?”

“I’m here, I’m here.”

“Thi- this is real, right?”

Because sometimes, there are nights where dreams feel all too real and pain comes rearing at you as if it all happened yesterday. Because after all these years, Lena still carries fear inside of her; fear that none of this is real, fhat Kara doesn’t really love her, that she’ll never be good enough, that she’ll be abandoned again. Fear that all of this is just a figment of her imagination. 

“Oh, Lena. Come here, I’m going to pass her unto you alright?” 

Lena’s eyes snap up to hers for a minute in hesitation but she finds herself slowly nodding. Kara wouldn’t give their daughter over if she isn’t sure Lena could handle it. She slowly transfers their child to Lena’s arms. 

“Do you feel her warmth?” 

“Mm-hmm.”

“Do you feel her weight?”

“She’s real, Lena. I’m real,” Kara says as she wraps her arms around them, cradling her wife and child close. 

“She’s getting heavy.”

“Yeah, yeah that she is. This is real, Lena.”

“Here,” she gently puts a pillow beneath Lena’s arms for support as she slowly grabs one hand and puts it right over her heart. 

“Feel this? Can you feel it?” 

Lena does, Lena can and she nods and it’s real and Kara’s heartbeats are steady under her palm; each beat an echo of Lena’s name. She’s certain of that, because she’s pretty sure her heartbeats are all echoes of Kara’s name again and again and again.

“This is real.”

“Promise?”

“Always.”

[flightfoot]

Greeting the New Dawn

Set post-Reveal in @buggachat Bakery Enemies AU, whenever that ends up being.

Thanks to Queenie for betaing!

AO3 ---------

“If you want me to leave, I will.”

Adrien looked off to the side, as if he thought that he wasn’t even worthy of meeting her gaze. As if already looking elsewhere, trying to impose on her as little as possible. “I can put in my resignation and tell your parents I found a different opportunity elsewhere.”

Marinette’s mouth went dry, her stomach dropping into a cavern. He- he couldn’t- not again- he couldn’t leave her- she’d only just got him back!

She willed desperately to say something, to stop him. 

Nothing happened.

Instead, she felt her mouth move, saying words she didn’t want to say. “I think that would be for the best.”

Adrien’s face fell further, his breath hitching slightly.

He didn’t say anything. Marinette suspected that if he tried, that hitch would devolve into full-on sobbing.

He turned around, heading for the door. 

Marinette regained control of her limbs. She reached out to grab him, to stop him from disappearing-

Her vision turned black.

-----

Marinette happily hummed as she kneaded some dough, her father joining her song. She’d missed spending time with her parents while she was in New York. 

*ding ding*

A customer?

Moments later, Sabine walked through the entryway to the kitchen. Marinette relaxed.

Until she got a closer look and noticed her eyes glistening.

“Maman?” 

“A-Adrien- he- he-!”

She burst into tears.

Marinette saw it then. Adrien desperately scrounging out of garbage bins to survive, getting thinner and thinner, having been unable to find another job. Losing his apartment, being forced out onto the streets.

Until finally someone had caught him going through their dumpster, recognized him, and decided that trash like him was unworthy of even having those rancid scraps. 

Adrien leaning against the dumpster, beaten and bloody as the rain came pouring down. Slowly closing his eyes.

He didn’t open them again.

-----

Marinette looked out the window at the rain. She’d given him her umbrella, he’d be fine. He said so himself. She didn’t need to do anything more, right? He could walk straight, he hadn’t even been slurring his words, he was coherent. Everything would be fine.

------

“Don’t be bemused, it’s just the news! Today, Adrien Agreste, son of the infamous supervillain, Hawkmoth, was found bludgeoned to death in an alley. The weapon of choice? An umbrella given to him by my favorite babysitter, Marinette Dupain-Cheng! Let’s give her a round of applause for helping set up the circumstances that allowed Paris to get rid of that loose end, once and for all.”

-----

Faceless masses quietly muttered all around Adrien.

A person would occasionally glance at him. Their face would twist up, fear and anger warring over their features.

Until they’d just walk away.

Leaving him alone, crying, desperately trying to reach someone, anyone.

They all slipped through his fingers like water, leaving nothing behind.

A flash of yellow. A defined figure. The last friend Adrien had.

“CHLOE!”

She turned around, gave him a glance.

Her hair swished as she turned back.

She didn’t look back a second time.

------

“Don’t be bemused, it’s just the news! Today Adrien Agreste was found dead in his apartment. Police are currently treating the case as a suicide-”

Marinette turned off the TV, getting back to designing her new outfit. It was sad what happened, but right now she wanted to concentrate on something more hopeful. 

She smiled as she looked at the red dress she’d just finished, its black accents making the bright red pop that much more.

Her Kitty was out there. She just needed to find him.

------

Marinette jolted awake, panting heavily. She threw off the covers, shakily getting to her feet. Stumbling forward, she reached out for the light switch.

It took her several tries to hit it. Her arm was shaking so badly she just kept on missing. 

Taking the stairs two at a time, she rocketed down. She really missed being Ladybug right about now; she could’ve just swung down to the first story.

A seeming eternity later (36 seconds later, to be exact), she rounded the corner into the kitchen.

The light was on, the sound of dough being rolled out punctuating the quiet of the early morning. 

Please let him be there please let him be there please please PLEASE-!

A blond-haired man turned around. “Mari-?”

She hit him like a freight train.

Instinctively Adrien wrapped his arms around her as they rolled to the side, dough spraying everywhere. 

She couldn’t bring herself to care.

“MARINETTE!” Adrien shouted, anxiety tinging his voice. “What’s wrong? Is someone hurt? Did anything get on you? I’m so, so sor-”

She just pulled him even tighter against her, muffling his voice with her shoulder. 

*thump thump thump*

Adrien was alive. He was here. He wasn’t in an alley or a grave or… or ALONE.

Not anymore.

“Ni-nightmare,” she choked out, trying not to cry. 

The blood drained from Adrien’s face. “It was him, wasn’t it?” He asked quietly, his voice quavering slightly. “I- I should’ve known, I wish I’d-”

“NO!”

She was NOT letting him take the blame for this. 

“It wasn’t your fault kitty, NONE of it was your fault. It was his, ONLY his, you did everything you could to stop him.”

Adrien frowned. For a minute she thought he was going to argue, but he seemed to think better of it. 

“And- and it wasn’t him anyway. Not really. It- it was you.”

“I- I’d never try to hurt anyone here, I’d never try to hurt you, regardless of what happened with Mother I-”

Marinette winced. Foot, meet mouth. Again.

“It wasn’t the Peacock nightmare. It- it was-”

She took a deep breath, pressing her head into his neck, feeling his pulse. “There were so many times when things could have gone worse than they did. Where you could’ve gotten hurt or killed. And- and I would never even have known I lost you.”

“I’m not going anywhere, My Lady,” he murmured into her ear. “Not unless you want me to.”

“If you want me to leave, I will.”

“NO!” She shook her head violently. “Never. I- I couldn’t stand it if-”

If I never saw you again. If you killed yourself because you thought no one wanted you around. Because you thought you deserved it. Or that you deserved to be out on the streets, struggling to survive, because of who your father is and how people see you because of it.

“I want you here,” she told him more calmly. She needed him to know that. To internalize it. “You deserve to be here. You deserve happiness and safety and people who love you and- and just every good thing in the world!” 

She’d tell him this every day if she needed to, until he believed it.

“I- I dreamed that you’d died those times. Like- like when you asked if I wanted you to leave. Or- or thinking back on what could’ve happened if you’d walked home while drunk. But the worst one? Was where you committed suicide before I ever ran into you as a civilian.”

She needed to bake Chloe some cookies. ALL the cookies. She’d probably comment about how she was only tolerating Marinette’s cooking in order to seem nicer to Adrien or something, but she didn’t care. If it weren’t for Chloe, then Marinette’s best friend, the love of her life, would probably be dead.

“In that nightmare, it barely even registered that you’d died. Just- you were just some stranger. Some stranger who was dead now. That- that was most horrifying of all.”

Her hearing about him dying and barely even caring because she didn’t know him - it terrified her more than anything else. Logically she’d known that was a possibility before she’d found out Adrien was Chat Noir, but- well she’d never really seriously thought about him dying. And- and part of her thought that because of how close they were, she’d just know if he was hurt, if something had happened to him. Would recognize him on sight if the worst happened.

But neither of them had known the other when they ran into each other at the bakery. And she’d never had a clue that the boy on the billboards was the same boy running alongside her on rooftops. 

Adrien held her tighter. Something wet dripped onto her neck.

She didn’t comment. His shoulder was damp from her own tears.

“It didn’t happen.” He told her. “It could have, but it didn’t. I- I know what it’s like to have those ‘what ifs?’ running through your head. Sometimes, the best you can do is tell yourself that everything did work out. That it’s okay. I- I tell myself that all the time. Every time I think about what could’ve happened if I never met your parents- if I’d never started working here. If I’d never seen you again. Never met Nino or Alya.”

“Adrien…” 

“It doesn’t help. There’s nothing that can be done about ‘what ifs’. It may not make those thoughts go away, but- but at least it doesn’t matter what could’ve happened, because it didn’t. And thinking about it in circles won’t help.”

He grinned at her. “You know what will?”

She blinked at him, lost for words.

Until she felt something sticky on her forehead.

Reaching her hand up, she got the substance off. 

Dough coated her fingers.

Her partner gave her a shit-eating grin. “Ooops.”

“Oh you are ON.”

As she chased her kitty around the kitchen, trying to tag him with bits of the fallen dough, she smiled.

He was alive. 

Maybe he wasn’t okay yet, but he would be.

And so would she.

[hawkinsschoolcounselor]

To add onto my point yes most hardcore fans would probably make the connection regardless but probably not causal viewers especially not after 3 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people forgot his name. It took me a second to make the connect between William and billy cause William doesn’t even have a B in it like what. It’s not unheard of to edit trailers for spoiler or coherency reasons.

I actually don’t disagree that there could be some maybe not alternate universe but alternate dimension time stuff at play cause of all the clock stuff though. I’m just not convinced that this is evidence. it just seems like a weird kind of inconsequential change to me, but maybe if they are going in like a Mandela (idk how it’s spelled) effect stuff this season it’s possible. It’s just not vibe I’m getting and I feel like we would see more evidence in the trailer

that does still raise the question of why the others came to the grave because they weren’t there at first and it seems to be occurring on the same day. In my opinion I don’t think max brought them there. I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t tell them about the clock stuff etc until this moment the duffers said this season was going to be about her learning to open up

so I assume something happened and they realized she may be in danger so they went to check on her then all the weird levitating stuff happens.

any way this kind of devolved into more theories I just like discussing theories <\3 I would say sorry for apologizing a bunch but that’s kind of redundant at this point. I’m just always scared of coming off as rude when I’m excited

Never feel sorry for having thoughts. Sometimes we may misstep when presenting them, but we should always feel free to have them. I haven't seen anything wrong in how you've done things here.

You could be right about them just touching up the tombstone for the trailer to avoid confusion. I still think that most people would know Billy is short for William, but I don't work in marketing for a major production. I also know that continuity is a big deal, though, and if they were going to do this then it would make sense for them to do it for the second tombstone, even if it wasn't quite as easy to see as the first.

You raise a good point about why the others go there with her. There does have to be a reason for that. Steve, Dustin, and Lucas certainly don't have a reason to mourn Billy. I could see one of them going with her just so she doesn't have to mourn alone, but the entire group being there tells us they had some other reason. Regardless, they certainly weren't expecting Max to be raised up into the air.

Don't hesitate to share your thoughts with me. You've done so thoughtfully and respectfully even though you don't agree with me.

[thepapergirlandthespiegelman]

Castlevania Season 4: I’m not mad, just disappointed

Season 4 is poorly written fanfiction, which is...better than a lot of things could be, I guess.

Spoilers below the cut.

Content warning: trauma, sexual assault, psychological manipulation

The Gods Have Had a Change of Heart

Or, “Season 3 Blocked and Ignored”

Season 3 felt like the fabric of the universe had been twisted just to inflict additional pain. Season 4 overcompensates in the other direction; trauma evaporates, and good things happen for no other reason than to make our favorite characters happy.

The Season 3 finale left two characters in particular totally devastated: Alucard and Hector. Alucard is violently betrayed in a horrifying sexual assault by the first two people he’s spoken to since Trevor and Sypha left. He ends up killing them in self-defense and puts their bodies on stakes outside the castle, alluding to his father’s habit of doing so and potentially hinting at a turn toward evil. Hector is seduced by Lenore and then enslaved using a magic ring.

Yet at the start of Season 4, it’s as if these things never happened. Alucard is troubled, but not totally devastated, certainly not evil. Taka and Sumi are referenced in exactly one conversation with new character, Greta, in which she says the rather tactless throwaway line, “I had a boyfriend and girlfriend at the same time once. But they never tried to kill me.” Hector is nominally imprisoned, but immediately seems highly agentic, perhaps even more so than before. He studies, lays traps, and makes secret plans with other people. Furthermore, his relationship with Lenore is completely transformed. From falling to his knees in abject horror and despair at being enslaved, he suddenly switches to light banter, in what is apparently a basically okay, mutually enjoyed romantic/sexual relationship. Manipulative, selfish Lenore is now a sympathetic character struggling to reconcile her own role and feelings with Carmilla’s plans.

The events of season 3 happened, remaining canon in the most basic, literal sense. But the emotional weight attached to them has disappeared into thin air.

Not gonna lie, I did breathe a sigh of relief when I saw that Alucard and Hector were okay. I’m soft-hearted! I don’t like seeing characters I like suffer! I mean, conflict is important, and I can deal with (or even enjoy in a certain sense) seeing characters suffer if it makes sense and serves a narrative purpose. But as far as I can tell, the season 3 finale was nothing more than lurid, meaningless violence. I probably wouldn’t have continued watching the show if it devolved into nothing more than finding novel ways to torture the characters.

Still, it doesn’t feel quite right to pretend like nothing happened either. Or, really, not that nothing happened, but that those things didn’t matter, didn’t hurt, didn’t leave lasting scars. That’s...almost kind of worse.

But, I thought, I can sort of forgive this sudden shift in the stars, given that there may have been some sort of change in creative direction relating to Ellis’ decreased involvement with the show.* Plus, season 3 was insanity. It’s not like it was full of great writing choices, so if we quietly ignore some of them, maybe that’s for the best.

*I only later learned that Netflix actually chose to continue with Ellis’ season 4 scripts. It is not lost on me that maybe Ellis doesn’t know how to write about the lasting effects of traumatic sexual experiences or how power dynamics can make a sexual relationship problematic because he doesn’t understand that those things exist.

Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening

Pretty Pictures, Not Much Else

Unfortunately, the disconnect between seasons 3 and 4 isn’t the only problem with this season. Although I felt that season 4 was a bit less boring than season 3 (I particularly enjoyed some of the earlier episodes of season 4), it suffers from the same basic problems of Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening.

None of the characters experience any significant development, let alone any sort of coherent arc. Sypha has changed slightly, becoming more rough and jaded. I did really like the scene where she talks about becoming the kind of person who says “shit.” I think it really speaks to how entering into a relationship with someone means taking on aspects of their lifestyle, and how that can change you in ways that you can’t predict and therefore can’t exactly “agree” to. Sometimes those changes are good, sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re neutral, and sometimes it’s difficult to know. But you have to accept that you’re sacrificing some aspects of the person that you could have been if you chose to live completely independently, or with someone else.

Trevor really hasn’t changed since season 1 when he first decided to take up the mantle of hero again. Likewise with Alucard. Hector and Lenore change, as previously noted, but that change is sudden, jarring, and occurs completely off screen in between seasons 3 and 4. Carmilla dies as exactly as she lived: bitter, angry, and violent. Saint Germain just kind of...gets fucked over in a nonsensical subplot, which is its own whole can of worms.

We also get several new characters in season 4, none of whom have developed personalities or motives, nor do they develop any of those things over the course of the season: Greta, Zamfir, Varney, Ratko.

And nobody. Does. Anything.

Trevor and Sypha spend the entire season trying to explore and aid Targoviste, which comes to absolutely nothing. They’re unable to help anyone, Zamfir dies, and they end up just jumping through a magic portal to the actually relevant subplot in the finale. Carmilla literally does little more than draw maps until she’s ultimately killed. Hector plays a minor role in Saint Germain’s extraction of Dracula from Hell; otherwise, he and Lenore basically just exchange banter. Saint Germain does sort of do some stuff? But it’s often unclear how he’s made his connections, who the people who are helping him are, or what exactly he’s doing in terms of his magic beyond “whatever it takes to get back to his lover.”

Sure, there are fight scenes, but they feel meaningless. There’s no context, no stakes. There’s also a LOT of dialogue, and it is. Not well written. Exposition is embarrassingly clumsy at times, and the philosophical musings are cliche at best, muddled and confusing at worst. There’s just not all that much going on.

That is, except for Isaac. But more on him in a second.

What Kind of Show Is This?

When the plot line adapted from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse ended with season 2, the show struggled to establish a new identity.

Despite nominally dealing with themes like whether humanity is inherently good or evil and how to cope with wrongdoing and loss, seasons 1 and 2 ultimately boiled down to a pretty generic action-adventure/fantasy plot with found family/power of friendship elements. Main characters Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard don’t really wrestle with big philosophical questions or suffer any major defeats. They know that they have to take down Dracula for the good of the world, and they work together as a team to do it, with a little character development relating to their various backstories sprinkled in.

Then season 3 happened, and things got weird. The trio is broken up for what feels like a pretty trivial reason—Alucard has to protect the castle and Belmont hold, I guess? And the result of that decision is that the dynamics for the three main characters are completely unbalanced.

Ellis openly admits that he basically went feral with the writing of season 3, and it shows. The messaging in seasons 1 and 2 was cliche, but consistent. The message of season 3? Anyone’s guess.

Season 4 reversed the darkening of tone from season 3, but shares its inability to pick a story and tell it.

Isaac is the Main Character

Always has been.

While I can’t say that his character or arc are perfect, I can say that he actually has a character and an arc. He starts off motivated by his fierce loyalty to Dracula, then has to struggle to find his purpose once Dracula is gone. He goes from subservient to agentic. He goes from fully endorsing the genocide of humanity and not caring about his own life to seeing some worth in humans and genuinely wanting to live. He has an interesting moment that deepens our understanding of what night creatures are, while also serving as an exploration of the meaning of one’s fundamental nature. Most importantly, these changes happen naturally over the course of the show. They never feel forced or out of the blue, and while I feel like even more could have been done with Isaac’s character, there’s a lot to appreciate about what is there.

If there’s any thread holding Castlevania as a single, coherent work together, it’s Isaac. Not only is his character the best executed and the most coherent over the course of the show, his character explores themes that are larger than himself and relevant to the show as a whole, like those mentioned earlier: misanthropy versus a belief in the value of humanity; the ability to go beyond one’s “nature” or initial circumstances; and how to respond to being wronged or losing something important to you. Exploring the individual lives of characters is great, but really good writing usually requires going beyond that to reflect on broader questions and ideas. Isaac is the only character here that serves that larger purpose.

Sorry...I Just Don’t Buy It

The season 4 finale is crazy, although in a different way from season 3′s.

Varney being Death makes no sense on several different levels. I’m not going to spend a lot of time picking that particular plot twist apart, but I will talk about why I think it doesn’t work at the largest scale, and how I think season 4 might have been done better.

Last minute twists with zero foreshadowing are rarely a good idea, and this is no exception. Why introduce this “Death” entity at the last minute to be the most important battle of the season? The finale of the entire show, even? Besides the lack of logic or emotional buildup, this robs the show of the opportunity to make use of the antagonists that it already has. Since Dracula died, Carmilla has been the obvious choice for a new big bad. Why hasn’t she done more?

Season 4 feels crowded with characters and plot lines that amount to nothing. Why not bring some of these characters together? If Carmilla is the main antagonist, how come she never meets any of the protagonists (except Hector, who is a pretty minor player in this ecosystem) or even affects them in any way?

Season 4 feels like maybe it was trying to make something out of season 3 and the model that it presented, but it ultimately fails to do so. The writers throw the trio back together at the end anyway, so why not have them rejoin sooner and work together? Maybe Sypha and Trevor’s past experience with Saint Germain could have helped Alucard and Greta piece together what he was plotting sooner, rather than all four of them being completely blindsided by it in the penultimate episode. (Sypha and Trevor know that someone is trying to resurrect Dracula, but they fail to find out any actual detail about the plans, despite their supposed attempts.) Have characters actually do stuff, figure stuff out, advance the plot!

Likewise, maybe Carmilla becomes aware of Saint Germain’s scheming, sees it as a threat, and tries to take him down. Maybe she tries to get involved and somehow use alchemy or the Infinite Corridor to her own benefit. What does it look like when power-hungry Carmilla, who wants to rule the world, finds out there’s an entire multiverse out there? That could easily set her up to be a foil to Saint Germain, causing him to realize that what he’s doing is wrong.

What actually ended up happening in the show feels disjointed and often empty. In particular, most of the events that happen in the last two episodes just don’t really work for me. I didn’t like Trevor suddenly sacrificing himself to this random, new, super powerful enemy, or how the gems and dagger that he found just happened to be the perfect weapon to kill this new enemy, or how he inexplicably returns from the dead.

This kind of thing is what I mean when I say that this season feels like fanfiction. Trevor comes back from the dead for no discernible reason other than that it would really suck if he died. Greta as a character seems to literally only exist to be Alucard’s girlfriend and support him so that he doesn’t have to continue to be alone and potentially turn evil. Alucard’s trauma from Taka and Sumi and Hector’s trauma from Lenore are both conveniently erased. Even Dracula and Lisa are resurrected somehow and get their happy ending. And it’s like, I guess I prefer deus ex machina to the opposite (Does that have a name? When everything is going well but then something terrible happens for no reason other than to make things worse for the characters?), but they’re both bad writing.

God. This isn’t even getting into what happened with the Council of Sisters. And I don’t even really like those characters, but that doesn’t mean I want to see their characters handled poorly.

I’m not sorry that I watched until the end, but I can’t in good faith recommend the show as a whole. If you’ve yet to watch Castlevania, just stop at the end of season 2. While there are some shining moments in seasons 3 and 4 (4 more than 3), it’s just really not worth it.

[lloydskywalkers]

let me just start out by saying i love ever single one of your stories!!! i’m pretty new to the show and your works just add so much more feeling to everything and it’s sooo good!!! i don’t know if you ever do requests or not, so don’t bother with this if you’re busy!! but if you ever get a chance could you write smthg abt Jay and Kai? their friendship is so underrated but so good and i live for the moments in the show when Kai’s big brother instinct(tm) kicks in for him as well as Nya and Lloyd

aH thank you so much!! i’m so glad to hear that :D and this isn’t...exactly what you asked for, but Kai and Jay have this fun of dynamic that reminds me a lot of me and my brother, and i’ve been tossing around little bits of interaction between them for a while now, so i tried to make something coherent out of those :’D

Jay likes to think he’s pretty good at the whole compartmentalizing thing, for the most part. Mainly because he actually knows what it means, and it is not, for instance, locking your team up in a literal compartment while rushing off to fight the other compartment that is your resurrected homicidal father into submission.

“That was one time,” Lloyd will grumble, as if he’s only almost-died once. And then Jay will flinch, because that’s where his compartments come into play.

(Nadakhan gets one, Unagami gets another, the whole fun-times adoption reveal another, and everything else can get stuffed into the metaphorical attic since they won’t pay rent.)

Unfortunately, the attic is where the bad stuff lives.

Metaphorically.

If Jay had a nickel for every time he almost lost all of his friends, he’d have two nickels, plus another nickel for Cole falling into the fog, and another for Lloyd getting crushed by a roof, and another for Zane blowing up, and another for Nya in that awful dress with paling skin as her breathing stutters and the light in her eyes draining and —

And Jay is way, way too familiar with how it looks when his family dies, and all the nickels in the world won’t help that.

So while Jay likes to think he’s pretty good at compartmentalizing, he also thinks he’s got a valid excuse for the way he reacts when Lloyd goes down in the fight that afternoon. Sure, some vague part of his mind remembers that they’ve got a plan they’re running, and Lloyd should easily be able to handle a tiny little stumble — but Jay’s mind is stuck in glaring oranges and health bars, the unsteady gasping noise Lloyd had made before he went down, dissolving into digitized cubes just like everyone else, and Jay—

Jay can’t handle that, compartments or not, so he clears the space between them in a heartbeat just in time to take the bullet that comes hurtling Lloyd’s way.

It’d probably be a very noble and touching scene, if one) Jay didn’t make a hideous squeaking noise when it hit because bullets hurt, and two) the bullet would have missed Lloyd by a good two feet anyways.

Ah well, he thinks, as everything devolves into panicked yelling. It’s the thought that counts.

Except thoughts do not count when Kai is involved, apparently. Or any of the rest of the team, for that matter.

“What is wrong with you?” Kai hisses right in his face, eyes wild and sparking. “I was covering Lloyd, what were you doing?”

“Filling in for you, obviously,” Jay retorts. He has an excellent followup to that, real snappy and all, except that’s the moment Kai’s hand clamps down on the bullet wound in his arm to stop the bleeding, and Jay ends up stifling a shriek instead.

Great, he thinks, fighting back stinging tears of pain as he tries not to take Kai’s apparent wrath too personally. At least Cole looks worried, along the the rest of the team, who are dutifully concerned for his wellbeing like proper teammates should be.

“He’s going to need the hospital,” Zane informs them, his voice a lot steadier and calmer than his words make Jay feel. Zane’s eyebrows furrow as he studies his arm. “Stitches, probably.”

Jay swallows, trying not to curse. There’s a sharp scream as Nya finishes taking out another attacker just beyond them, and Jay figures that’s good enough.

“Okay,” Lloyd says, squeezing Jay’s wrist briefly. Either in comfort about the stitches or thanks for trying to cover him, Jay’s not sure. It’s a nice gesture, nonetheless. “Kai, Cole, can you get him there while we finish up? Sooner the better.”

Cole gives a sharp nod, and offers to take Jay from where Kai’s got him in a death grip. Kai shakes his head, and Jay’s stomach sinks. Sure enough, as soon as they’re clear of the scene, Kai starts going off.

“What did you mean, ‘filling in for me’,” he grinds through his teeth, clearly not about to let this go.

Jay bristles in response at his tone. “I meant,” he bites out, through a hot flare of pain in his arm. Kai’s always merciless with the bandages, even when he’s not in a mood. “That you weren’t there. So I covered.”

He should leave it at that, but Jay’s in a foul enough mood to finish with a condescending, “You’re welcome.”

Kai’s expression grows thunderous. “You didn’t need to. I was right there, you shouldn’t have — you weren’t needed, you should’ve held back.”

Jay feels his chest go tight. His head is clouding with anger, and the pain in his arm isn’t helping, but — ‘you weren’t needed’? Kai really didn’t skimp on the jerk juice this morning, did he.

“Oh, like you could’ve done so much better,” Jay glares. “Lloyd would’ve been toast by the time you got to him.”

“I could’ve made it!”

“Yeah right—”

“I would have, and I wouldn’t have gotten hit!” Kai snarls back. Something in Jay snaps. Or maybe it’s just the steadily increasing blood loss, but of all the nerve—

“Well you didn’t, ‘cause you weren’t there!” he snaps back. “You were too slow, which is real funny since your brain is too!”

It’s not his best comeback, he’ll admit, but Kai looks as if he’s about to light him on fire, if he weren’t stuck carrying Jay like the cover of some awful romance novel, blood getting all over his uniform as they both scream at each other. Maybe Jay will get lucky, and Kai will combust, and they’ll both go up in flames before they can remember that Cole is right there watching them.

“Cut it out, now!”

Oops, too late. For all the incensed authority in Cole’s voice, there’s still a traitorous falter that lets them both know they’ve screwed up. They fall silent, the atmosphere heavy with the lingering tension and new sense of guilt.

And the disgusting sound of Jay’s blood leaking through the makeshift bandage and hitting the ground, truly revolting, he hates blood.

“Just…no more. Please, shut up until we’re at the hospital.” Cole marches forward, snatches Jay from Kai’s arms, and proceeds to beat the fastest route to the hospital at a militant pace.

Jay still looks like some helpless romance cover heroine, dangling from Cole’s arms like he is. It occurs to him that he doesn’t even need to be carried — it’s his arm that’s hurt, he can still walk—

But any protests die rapidly at the look on Cole’s face. And at least this way, Jay thinks sullenly, he can fixedly ignore Kai.

Then again, Kai’s got a killer glare, and Jay’s always been garbage at ignoring people when his feelings are hurt.

* * * * * * * *

Despite the fuss everyone makes, Jay’s arm really isn’t that bad. They hook him up with some pretty sweet meds so he remembers zero of the actual arm-fixing, and he wakes up just in time to complain about being held in the hospital for ‘observation’ or whatever.

“It’s to make sure there’s no infection, or that you don’t rip your stitches out,” Nya tells him pointedly. Jay cringes under the look she gives him at that last part. Geez. You get kicked in the stitches one time after sneaking out early and suddenly no one’s got any faith in you. Typical.

“Why couldn’t we have just gone to medbay,” Jay grumbles. “Pixal gives way better stitches than this, anyways.”

“Gun wounds get hospitals,” Nya reminds him. “And it’s not fair to put that kind of pressure on Pix when we can avoid it.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

Nya glares at him. “It most certainly was that bad.”

“Oh, so when you get your arm crushed by a car, it’s fine,” Jay glares back. “But when I get a tiny little bullet nick, it’s that bad.”

Nya rolls her eyes, ignoring him. “Just think of it this way,” she says. “Now you have a little more time before Lloyd starts weeping apologies all over you.”

“Aw, no,” Jay groans, leaning back in the hospital bed. “Tell me he’s not blaming himself, Nya.”

“I think we had a promise about not lying to each other, or something,” Nya says, sympathetically. She winces. “Pretty sure he made the connection, too.”

Jay frowns. “What connection?”

Nya shifts, her eyes darting from side to side. “The, uh, the whole…Prime Empire, thing.”

Jay stares at her for a beat, trying to reconcile his blatant shock with the roiling nausea at the mention in his stomach. Nya looking at him all kind and sympathetically isn’t helping, either, because she might have made it down to the final two, but she was never all alone, and the reminder that she’d have been fine if Jay hadn’t gotten her killed twice is—

Bad. Real bad, not good, zero out of ten stars. Maybe he can take a bullet for Nya, next, and that’ll — that’ll help things, maybe. Equivalent exchange? Restitution? Some kind of fancy word that means Jay swears he’s gonna make it up.

In the meantime, he smothers the rising sickness in his throat and sinks lower into the bed, sulking. “It’s too easy to recognize trauma in this team.”

“I hear you,” Nya sighs, wearily. She nudges his shoulder, rising from her seat near the bed. “Speaking of. Someone’s got something they want to say to you.”

It takes Jay a second, but his eyes widen as Nya heads for the door. “Wait, wait wait wait, don’t you dare—”

“Love you,” Nya says cheekily, before taking her merry leave of the room. There’s a brief scuffle from outside, and the sound of Kai yelping, before Nya shoves him through the door, slamming it shut behind him with a damning click.

For a second, Jay’s tempted to hit the ‘call nurse’ button as hard as he can, in some desperate attempt to escape. Then he gets a good look at Kai, who’s turned a pale, queasy color that frankly looks awful on him, which is saying a lot ‘cause there isn’t much that doesn’t look good on Kai, but the expression he has on now—

Aw, man, now Jay’s feeling guilty and it isn’t even his fault. Stupid moral conscience center, he curses himself.

“So, uh…” he begins, because far be it from him to let this kind of awkward silence stretch on any longer. “Nice, ah, weather we’re having?”

Kai doesn’t respond, staring fixedly at the floor, and Jay sizes up the ‘call nurse’ button again. Just for the both of their sakes, of course.

But then Kai takes a deep breath, blows it out, and rocks back on his heels, fiddling with his hands. “I, um. I’m sorry.”

Jay’s jaw drops open. Which is probably an overdramatic move, all things considered, but unless he’s suddenly lost the ability to understand words, Kai just apologized to him.

Kai apologized. To him.

It’s not that Kai apologizing is some great big deal — Kai might have his pride, but he’s also an intuitive and good-hearted person who knows when he’s messed up. But to him?

Jay knows how he and Kai work. Kai knows how he and Jay work, and he’s breaking the rules. Because Kai and Jay don’t apologize to each other. Unless it’s some awkward expression of sympathy, they’ve never needed to. They fight dirty, aim for each other’s kneecaps, swear eternal vengeance and hatred at each other before storming off, then an hour later Jay’s bounding into Kai’s room to show him dumb meme videos and neither of them even remember what they were fighting about.

Acknowledging said fight with something as gushy as apologizing is not only useless since they both forget what they’re apologizing for anyways, but also useless because it’ll take too much time, and counterproductive on top, because it’ll most likely end in another fight about who apologized better. So for Kai to walk in and say sorry—

“Oh no, who did you kill?” Jay says, paling.

Kai spears him with a look, but it’s so pathetically watered-down and miserable that Jay forgets to glare back.

“Sorry, sorry,” Jay mutters. “I just—”

“No, no, I’m the one who’s sorry,” Kai interrupts. He hesitates, then sighs. “But that’s fair. I — I was unfair. To you, back there. Like, really unfair, in a bad way, ‘cause you were shot and I know you meant well, but you—”

Kai gestures wildly with his hands, his stream of words cutting off. Jay is left to stare open-mouthed at him again. Babbling like this is Jay’s thing. Kai is breaking all the rules today, huh.

“I just…” Kai trails off, ducking his head. “I don’t like watching you guys get hurt. I don’t — I don’t like watching you get hurt. And I get scared, but it comes out angry, and then I make a mess of things so I’m — sorry. Really sorry, for biting your head off.”

He exhales, a little shaky, fingers balled up in tight fists as his head hangs low, refusing to meet Jay’s eyes. Something softens in Jay’s chest, like gooey melting butter or something else equally pathetic. But it’s rare that Kai vocalizes this stuff, despite the fact that Jay knows he cares, and it’s nice to hear it, so he figures he’s entitled to all the butter he wants.

Jay’s own gaze falters, and the something starts to twist. He bites his lip, tugging half-heartedly at the bandages around his arm.

“Well,” he pauses, thinking of the way his brain had shifted to autopilot when he’d watched Lloyd falter, the razor-sharp shard of terror that always splinters through him when any of their teammates come too close to the awful images of death left in his head. He swallows. “I guess I don’t really have any room to talk,” he murmurs. “Be pretty dumb if I blamed you for that.”

He’s preparing to sink back into his own well of self-pity and loathing, resigned to spending the next few hours until they check him out of the hospital replaying bad memories in his head, when Kai’s next to him all of the sudden, shoving him over on the hospital bed.

“Hey, hey, what’s the big idea—”

“Move, c’mon. You don’t need that much room, you’re a stick,” Kai grumbles, before grinning brightly in success as Jay makes him space. The contrast in expression is enough to startle Jay into silence, and Kai takes advantage. “I know that look. But you already got shot, so you gotta cheer up now.”

“So you’re forcing me into cheerfulness by stealing my hospital bed,” Jay scowls, but the sting is lost in the sudden surge of affection as Kai elbows his way on the bed with him, a steady warmth by his side.

“I’m gifting you my presence, you should be celebrating,” Kai huffs, as he pulls his phone out. “Now stop looking so sad and watch this video I got of a bunch’a geese chasing Zane at the park the other day.”

“You’re such a jerk,” Jay says, but he’s already snickering as he leans his head against Kai’s shoulder to get a better look.

He’s forgotten to tell Kai he forgives him, but like most things between them — Jay doesn’t really need to say it out loud.

[onlydreamofmysoul]

Gingerbread (Ficmas #1)

Here we go!!! Ficmas day one! Super excited about this - I’ve never done ficmas before! As promised... a little sweet competition!

Characters and their world by @lumosinlove “Is everyone ready?” Celeste asked, standing around her kitchen, looking at the room nearly overflowing with hockey players and their loved ones. “Leo and I are the judges. The rules are simple, you all have to build a gingerbread house, everything you need is right in front of you. The best looking one wins, okay?” 

Remus grinned and nodded, nudging Sirius excitedly. They had everything - including the gingerbread premade by Celeste herself, so even if it looked like a disaster it was sure to taste amazing. Not that theirs would look anything less than fantastic.

On second thought, maybe a group of highly competitive athletes working against each other instead of with each other was a bad idea.

“Okay guys!” Leo called as he hopped up to sit on the counter and oversee the proceedings. “You have one hour. Your time starts.... Now!”

Remus grinned at Sirius, and then they set to work.

Logan knew watching Leo be all authoritative as a judge while he just had to watch would be hard. He didn’t know it would be torture. He was teamed with Adele and Katie, but Adele had to keep hitting his arm to get his attention.

“Logan,” She warned. “I want to win. Now are you gonna focus or not?”

Logan shook his head. Leo could wait. He had a competition to win. “Oui, sorry yes I’m good now.”

Adele nodded, apparently satisfied and Katie drew their attention back to her when she started bouncing in her seat. 

“Allez!” She said, her eyes wide, “Tremzy come on I wanna get to the part where I can eat it.”

Logan chuckled but obliged her, obediently holding pieces of gingerbread in place at the girls’ command as the icing dried.

“Okay, no pressure or anything, but your name’s Noelle so I’m expecting you to dominate this Christmas thing.” Thomas said, only partially jokingly as Noelle carefully piped the outline of their ‘windows’. 

“Um, excuse you Thomas Walker,” She replied, “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Okay, but hear me out,” Thomas started as he picked up a piece of gingerbread, and started piping green spikes on it. “We should have pine trees in front of it.”

Noelle looked at him like he was losing his mind. “Babe, it’s a gingerbread house.” She said slowly as if it were a foreign concept.

“I know!” Thomas said, excitedly waving his hands and as he did, his pine tree went flying through the air and landed in Kasey’s hair. 

Kasey turned around very slowly and looked around menacingly, reaching up and pulling the biscuit out of his hair, leaving green splotches and crumbs in its wake.

“Who?” He ground out, and Thomas looked around with a shocked expression. “I have no idea! Noelle? Did you see anything?”

Noelle bit down her laugh and shook her head. “Non. Maybe it was one of the kids?” She said, looking over at Logan’s table to where Katie had more icing on her than the house. Kasey followed her and his vision softened. He nodded once and turned back around, Thomas made another tree and held it up to Noelle.

“They’ll never see it coming.” He said, finally finishing his statement. Noelle rolled her eyes, but in the end, there were a ton of palm trees in their ‘garden’. 

Finn was with Pascal and Marc, all of them particularly competitive and set on winning except there was one little problem… None of them had ever actually made a gingerbread house before.

“I think it goes like this?” Marc said, tilting his head as he stuck two pieces together, the icing going everywhere. He let go and they all held their breath while the biscuits stood for about ten seconds before collapsing so slowly it was actually a little sad. 

“I say we give up and just eat everything.” Finn proposed. Marc nodded, Dumo looked like he was going to put up a fight, but one glance at their gingerbread wreckage had his shoulders slumping. He reached out and broke off a bit of biscuit, popping it into his mouth with a grin.

“At least it tastes good?”

“But we didn’t make-” Marc began.

“Shh.” Finn cut him off with a playful wink. “At least it tastes good.”

Kasey’s hair was green and that had been a problem but then Alex promised he’d wash it out himself later that night and well, those words along with the little wink Natalie sent him had Kasey pretty okay with the whole situation. He sat there, smiling softly as he listened to Alex and Natalie chat away while Kasey did all the actual work, creating quite a nice gingerbread house, thank you very much.

Kasey grew up with his dad baking every Sunday and he’d always help. He wasn’t ashamed to say he was quite handy with a piping bag, and Alex was watching with wide eyes as Kasey piped ‘snow’ on the roof.

“How-” Alex stuttered, his eyes focused on Kasey’s hand.

Natalie bit down her smile. “He likes to keep people guessing.”

“I… I’m not complaining.”

“Like what you see O’Hara?” Kasey asked, unable to stop himself from teasing the other man. Alex was as prone to flushing a deep red as his brother, but Kasey found Alex looked a lot boyish when it happened to him.

“I definitely like what I’m seeing.” Alex replied, before cheekily dipping his finger in the icing and smirking at Kasey as he ate it. 

Natalie laughed at them both as she leaned in and kissed the sugar dusting Alex’s lips. Kasey raised an eyebrow, but kept looking at what he was doing, until Alex was standing next to him.

“Open up.” Alex prompted, holding his icing coated finger up to Kasey’s lips. Kasey made eye contact with Natalie for a split second, before doing as instructed, smiling into the kiss Alex gave him after.

“Chocolate was always my favourite.” Alex said with a sigh as he sat back down, Natalie placing her feet in his lap as she shamelessly ate the sweets they needed to decorate. Kasey glanced up to see Leo already looking at him.

“Redheads.” Leo mouthed with a shrug, “Gotta love em.”

Leo had to admit, sitting back and watching the world devolve into chaos was quite entertaining. He could still taste the gingerbread Finn had given him, their house looking more like it had been hit by a hurricane instead of like someone had actually tried to, you know, build it. Logan’s little team was doing a whole lot better, it was looking a little messy but Katie was doing a lot of the icing and well, there’s only so neat kids can be, try as they might. 

Leo’s heart melted as it always did when he would watch Logan with Dumo’s kids. He was just so good with them and they adored him in turn. One of the spare bedrooms in their apartment had been the designated spot for where they would keep presents until they were able to give them out, and Leo was fairly sure half of the room’s contents were just Logan’s presents for the little Dumais’.

“Are rookies even allowed to be judges?” Thomas queried as Leo passed and Leo had fun getting to act all haughty. Thomas looked particularly suspicious and Leo didn’t miss the correlation between the green icing he sported and the little patch of colour in Kasey’s hair. Leo filed that little bit of information away for a day he could really use it.

“Do you think it’s a good idea to get on a judge's bad side, Talkie?”

“Hey, you love me!” Thomas protested and Noelle shook her head. 

“No, but he loves me.” She said looking at Leo and winking. “You’ve got to stay on the good side of your future in-laws.”

Leo felt himself flush even as Logan twisted in his seat to look at them. “Tricheuse!” Logan cried. “Leo baby don’t listen to her, she just wants to win.” He stuck out his tongue at Noelle.

Leo abandoned Noelle and Thomas to crouch next to Logan, smirking. “Am I not marriage material Tremblay?”

Another time, earlier in their relationship maybe, Logan would have scrambled to reassure Leo, probably tripping over his own words so many times nothing actually coherent came out. Now though, Logan just smiled at him lazily.

“The most. I just mean she loves you either way, I think there’s literally nothing you could do that would make her not like you.”

Leo kissed him on the cheek before laughing as Katie wrapped her arms around him. 

“Salut Katie!” He said, standing up to throw her in the air, Katie shrieking with laughter before Leo set her back down on her chair. Leo stood up and began to move away, but not before he missed Katie unintentionally chirping Logan, “Leo throws me high.” She said in a serious tone as Leo snorted his laughter, shaking his head as he moved away.

Regulus hadn’t been sure about building a gingerbread house with Nado and Kuny - he didn't really know them and as a general rule, he didn’t like to spend too much time with people he didn’t know. But Dima got on with them really well and Dima was his friend so here Regulus was, building a gingerbread house in Pascal Dumais’ house. Two snakes in a lion's den.

“Are you sure that will hold?” Regulus found himself asking sceptically as Kuny attempted to build a several story building. Gingerbread house - more like gingerbread mansion if Kuny had his way.

Nado answered instead just nodding his head. “Of course.”

“Fair enough.” Regulus conceded, happy to sit back and watch the proceedings. He glanced around the room, still not quite sure where he fit into this chaotic little familial like team, but happy to be here all the same. More than happy to see nothing but pure joy on his brother’s face. Hope because maybe Regulus could find that kind of happiness here too.

“D’accord!” Celeste called, clapping her hands. “Okay everyone step away from your tables, your time is up!”

The team piled into the sitting room as Celeste and Leo judged all the gingerbread houses. Sirius and James sat on the floor, with Harry playing happily with them. Remus and Lily sat snugly on the couch above them, both nursing mugs of tea and heads bent together as they caught each other up on the events of the last couple of weeks. 

Finn and Logan were having an arm wrestling competition in the corner and most of the others piled around to watch them, all yelling for someone. Logan won, Finn hanging his head in shame and then they were both immediately challenged by the rest of the team, Logan battling (and losing quite dramatically) to Katie. 

Leo and Celeste came back into the room, looking quite smug as they held up a cardboard trophy.

“We have the winner,” Leo said to get everyone’s attention and the sudden hush that fell upon the room was quite comical. 

“Drumroll!” Thomas cried and the room was filled with the rapid thuds of everyone slapping their hands against the nearest object.

“And the winner is…” Celeste drew out, “Katie, Adele and Logan!”

The trio jumped up, hugging and high fiving. 

Logan stood up on a chair and pressed his hands against his chest in gratitude. 

“Thank you, thank you,” He joked, wiping away a fake tear. “We’ve been dreaming about this for, mon dieu, I don’t know how long.”

“You weren’t this dramatic when you won MVP!” Sirius called from the back of the room and Logan winked at him before continuing. “I think Adele had the idea that secured our win though, Adele?”

The girl dashed to the kitchen and came back with their little gingerbread house, the outside entirely lined by little gingerbread people. 

“We made the team!” Katie said, bouncing on her toes. There was a rush as everyone came over to have a look and before long, everyone was grabbing their figurine and eating them.

“Goodbye little Thomas.” Talkie said mournfully before biting its head off.

“Hey, maybe now I can give myself head.” Leo muttered to Finn, who promptly choked, spitting crumbs everywhere as he flushed a deep red.  

Remus leaned back into Sirius as they munched on their biscuits. 

“This is fun. We should do it again next year.”

Sirius wiped the crumbs from his lip and tightened his hold on Remus’ waist. “And the year after that, and they year after that, and the ye-”

Remus giggled, twisting in Sirius’ arms to shut him up by kissing him. “Yeah, baby. I’d like that.”

[bittcrblue]

@wanderingbasilisk​ said: no idea if youre still doing this 😂 your ask box is closed. (If youre not, feel free to ignore!) But im curious about what wildemount 68 is? (Is that a reference to smthing? No idea 😂) Also cant not ask about this single dad essek? ??

Hi, first of all, I’m a moron and I’m fixing this as we speak! ^^; 

So, a brief topos of both these AUs, and then I’ll post snips under read-more :)

a) Wildemount 68 is a deeply self-indulgent AU set in a pseudo-20th century Wildemount based on the student revolts of 1968 in France and Germany. (I am French) I think that it’s a really fitting setting both for the quasi- Cold War setting of the Empire and Dynasty after the end of the war (racing for technologies, etc) and because I think that Caleb as a character really fits into the attitude of what is called the Long March to the Institutions, where a subsect of the 1968 student revolutionnaries decided to move into a path of reform and enter positions of government, etc. (Most of those politicians became less and less radical as time went on. There’s a good German teen film called Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei! which deals with this.) I also just think that I want to see the M9 chainsmoking in a Parisian café or lecture hall as they plan their revolt. (In this au, also, Fjord is a theatre major.)

b) Single Dad Essek Au is born out of my urge to always give uppity fictional men a baby to slobber on them and knock them down a peg. In this AU (and in all of my fics, actually) there is a character called Cousin Misphi, who is Essek’s cousin and is on her second lifetime and is overall a bad, but down to earth, influence on him in formative years. In SDEAU, she dies during the first skirmishes of the war - and because Essek traded away the Rosohna beacons, the one nearest the Ashguard Garrison was moved to Rosohna, and Misphi won’t be reconsecuted. Essek, experiencing Guilt and The Consequences of His Actions much earlier than in canon, takes the first step of repentence by taking in her 3yo tiefling daughter, Sokoya (his second cousin, for those following at home). This will tint his interactions with the Nein and change the way that things develop during the Rosohna arc. (This will also make him less suspicious, because the Dynasty sees him harried and stressed and not sleeping and go “ah, yes, the terrible threes”.)

Snippets now!

a)  “Ach, scheisse, I’m running out,” Caleb says, pulling his last cigarette from the case and tapping it against the table. “Does anyone have rolling papers?”

“I’ve got you,” Veth said immediately, digging through her purse. “Do you have tobacco? How are you on money?”

“I’m fine, maman,” he smiles, not rolling his eyes only out of affection.

“Don’t you maman me, I’ve had my tongue in your mouth,” she scolds.

“Come here, Caleb,” Jester interrupts, and Caleb leans in to press his unlit cigarette to the burning cherry of hers, breathes in deep. He has not kissed Jester Lavorre in any way that matters, but this will have to suffice him. He leans back and blows a smoke ring.

“Very cool, dipshit.” Beauregard drops into a chair next to him. “Are we actually here to talk about plans, or is this just going to devolve into an orgy? Because there’s only so many times we can be libertines ‘ironically’.”

“I’m preparing web of fire and catapult tomorrow,” Caleb says. 

“I still think we should use fluffernutter,” Veth grumbles. Jester cheers.

“You are all so intense,” Fjord despairs. “What’s wrong with just throwing a rock, or a bottle? By Melora.”

“She’ll be there, don’t worry,” Caduceus says over his cup of tea. “I’m already anticipating that this will go terribly wrong.”

“Maybe it will only go somewhat wrong? Does that make you feel better?”

“That does not, Yasha, but thank you.”

b) Sokoya is a stubborn child - “You were much worse,” says the Umavi, fondly - who loves to chatter, even if little of what she says is coherent. At least thirty percent of Essek’s day, court notwithstanding, is spent nodding and making affirmative noises, saying “No, indeed?” and “Quite” whenever she pauses in her stories. She rarely forgives the moments when he leaves to answer Sendings, both the mundane and the confidential, and will chase after him to smack at his ankles and knees. “I wasn’t done,” she will whine, and Essek will be struggling not to lash out in agony. 

It takes a few months for her to learn that no, we don’t hit Cousin Esse in the legs, that isn’t acceptable behaviour because he is injured and it hurts. 

“How would you like it if I did this?” Essek asks, and rubs his knuckles into the top of her head roughly, and she shrieks, trying to bite at his forearm with her fangs, which are still baby-sharp. 

“Ow! Ouchie!” she yells. 

“Yes, ouchie,” Essek says sternly. “We don’t hit people. Not only is it painful and rude, it’s also tacky. We’re not middle class. We are a ruling den, and we act like it.” 

Sokoya lashes her tail back and forth, short as it is, and then toddles over to press a kiss against Essek’s shin.

“Better?” she asks, and he can’t help but laugh. 

“I’m not sure what clerical discovery you’ve just made,” Essek says, and picks her up to great cheering. “But it was truly innovative. Groundbreaking stuff. Are you sure you didn’t cast cure wounds?”

“Cured,” she repeats smugly. “Kiss it better and it’s cured.”

“That doesn’t work for anything else, so we’re clear,” Essek says. “If you hurt yourself, come find me or get help.”

“Cured,” she insists, and Essek sighs.

“Let’s call this one a learning experience and move on, shall we?”

[elizabethrobertajones]

SPN deserves flak for handling sensitive topics irresponsibly, especially since it has a teenage audience. Castiel confessed that he's suicidal in season 8 (written by dabb!), the brothers were in a toxic codependency, Sam was sexually harassed by lucifer, a little kid -Jack- was driven to self-harm/suicide. and none of those issues were addressed or solved in 15 years. instead, the message was that people with troubled pasts could only "be forgiven" if they sacrificed their lives (Jack) or died

Yeeeeaaaah that’s something it was always getting criticism for consistently as it went along as a case- by-case basis of the treatment... There were some woke episodes later on with the newer writers which did handle some subject better but honestly usually in a motw way with side characters proving better examples to the Winchesters’ messed up coping. 

I guess one thing that I was leaning on a bit was that if it was all going somewhere that the resolution would be okay because the writing was aware that they did have these issues. For example, Carver era was really heavy on the codependency stuff but it was painting it in such a bad light that it was beyond romanticising it in any sense and the message seemed to be that the writing wanted them to heal. I personally think this was healed a fair amount over Dabb era along the way... But the finale as far as I can tell let Sam move on with his life and break the cycle or whatever, but also was so wildly unsatisfying on every front it probably would have been HEALTHIER for the fucker to go straight to Hell and petition Rowena for giving her an eternity of foot rubs in exchange for Dean back. Just so he could be like “what the hell what that, you nearly married that BLURRY WOMAN? What’s WRONG WITH YOU”

(I don’t know the fine details on this death scene to know or care how the Sam and Dean relationship wrapped up because it was clearly garbage and in my head they’re both still happy and alive and have a normal freaking relationship :P)

In any case, I know so much was carried by these characters that, to be serious for a moment, I don’t know if they ever could have lifted the whole weight of what we needed them to be, even in an ideal end. But I do know that by giving the show such a shaky resolution, especially with bringing Cas back off screen and not giving any real closure and telegraphed final scenes with anyone - i mean even the love confession and empty yeeting feel like Dean’s supposed to have another moment with him later and it doesn’t feel death scene-y enough to me because of the complete lack of closure the confession gives it by opening the new possibility moments before death - vast amounts of character work which could have HELPED bring some of these things to a conclusion just never showed up, it seems. 

Like, Sam’s Blurry Life With The Blurry Wife seems like an even worse state than his season 7-8 hiatus time with Amelia because at least she had a FACE and BACKSTORY and LINES ON SCREEN. At least she and Sam talked through their issues and related to each other and they had a reasonable reason for it not working out and they got to see what they both needed from each other at the time and what they couldn’t get from each other moving forwards. 

Even ignoring that Sam got the perfect endgame with Eileen, a Generic Blurry Wife ending for him is such garbage because so much of his bad coping is bound up in his hiding and running away... Just because Dean once waxed poetic about wanting Sam to grow old and boring and live a normal life doesn’t mean it’s what his character was best suited to or what he would really have been comfortable with long-term, especially when as far as I can tell Dean dies and he just up and abandons his hunting life and goes to be normal. If for garbage reasons you were ditching Eileen a happy ending for Sam would still probably involve a hunting-connected life, even if it was a montage showing him holed up in the Bunker being the new Bobby while nothing else changed and Dean was having bad drinks with the original Bobby in Heaven. Like just that one change would make Sam’s journey make sense that he stopped running away and accepted who he was and that the trauma shaped him but didn’t break him, and that he had moved beyond the harmful relationships with women who he valued for their normality, who he then told nothing about his life, bottled up his trauma and dismissed his past and then lived a sliver of existence right on the edge of sanity and coping. Blurry Wife might have the benefit that theoretically the cosmic nonsense is over and Sam might not be called back to that battlefield but the toll on Sam’s life from his history can’t just... disappear overnight. Literally his entire mental health arc which was based on his trauma and addressing it and overcoming it, and how Sam learns who he is beneath it and how it has made him uniquely Sam and stronger for it is all washed away. 

And that of all the examples you mentioned is like the only one I can talk about with any coherence without devolving into screaming about how better endings were owed all around. If the characters are denied meaningful narrative closure than everything they’ve carried with them, from just the way a plot will feel resolved or not, to all the stuff we reflect onto them about our own issues that we see in theirs, ends up dumped to the side and it leaves painful holes. 

I don’t think a better ending in terms of just wrapping up the show as it seemed to be on track to, until it abruptly wasn’t in the finale, would have ever fixed all of it or meant enough to some of us when it comes to things we’ve carried alongside the characters for a long time. Like I doubt even a full canon Destiel ending by their pen could have addressed ALL the issues we put on Dean and Cas and in our explorations in fic and meta and headcanon and crackposts and whatever else, feel like they’d need to talk out or resolve to be fully content on screen with each other. But there sure were things that could have been done with a few meaningful lines here and there and obviously Cas visually on screen with Dean at the ending that would have made things easier, or provided the paths to seeing these things resolved in our ongoing imaginings.

A lot of the finale pain seems to be the abrupt wall that the story just STOPS like that and so much of this is all left hanging and we’re all feeling the pain of many things that we forgave the story for along the way because there was a trust in the way storytelling works that we’d get that catharsis and closure at the end, and that all the painful stories we were told were being told for that reason. Like, the main reason to write painful stuff and dark themes is to explore it and look right at the horrible stuff, but then to find ways to bring it back down and let some of it go. And most of why I’m refusing to watch the end of the show is simply because it sounds like none of what any of us wanted to get out of it actually happened and there were NO paths to get these things we needed out of it. And at which point many of the terrible things that happened along the way now feel uncomfortable in a way that it’s torture porn without any relief or reason for doing it. The feeling is so universal and the descriptions of that last episode so laughably bad on that front that it’s the main reason I don’t want to watch it. Like, I can get a better sense of satisfaction bitching about how it should have ended than I’d get watching it so why would I do that? :P 

Anyway. Guess you got me ranting but this really is something I think in hindsight that might make rewatches really awful way back into the show just because you’ll be watching something and realise that for all the character is going through, they’re not going to get a resolution that actually would do anything to make any meaningful comment at all on what they’re going through. So now you’re just watching them suffer for the hell of it? Idk, this fear haunts me >.>