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heterotragedies · 3 years ago

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addict | 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐢

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬: 1.2k

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: mingi + female reader

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬: drabble, suggestive, kissing, smallest humping,high school seniors au,

𝐞𝐱𝐭: super ultra short drabble. shortest thing ive ever written, hope u guys like it!

.˚ ₍🗒₎ ꒰ © 𝐡𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐬 ꒱

It was hot, the entire room was stuffy and humid. Lips smacking against one another and heavy panting were the only things that filled the room. Your hands were all over Mingi’s body, one tangled in his soft silky tresses and the other finding purchase on his bare shoulder. His shirt had been unbuttoned halfway, part of it slipping off his broad frame and exposing his defined collarbones and strong chest.

Mingi’s large palms cupped each and every curve of your body: ass, tits, thighs, face. Any and all curves he could get his hands on, he’d touch. Because he’s addicted. Addicted to your skin against his, addicted with how his hands are the perfect fit to every part of your body. He’s gone mad because he’s so in love with how your lips taste against his. So soft and plump and covered in his favourite peach lip gloss.

Sitting on his lap was your favourite position. Having him tower over you no matter the situation because he is just that tall made your toes curl and fingers tingle. One of your hands trailed down to Mingi’s chest, drawing circles and electric doodles onto his skin before following the line of the tank top he wore underneath his school uniform.

Once Mingi swiped a tongue along your bottom lip, it was over for you. At just that one move he had you putty in his arms. A whine escaped your lips when they parted and you eagerly tried to take his tongue into your awaiting mouth. You want him to explore you, like he has done many times before yet you can’t seem to get enough. Mingi was too addicting.

You were too inebriated with his touch, his warmth, the sparks that erupt at his fingertips and zips straight into your core. He was high on the taste of your lips and the miniscule whines that called for him, needing him as if he was the water you drink and food that you feast on.

With your lover’s tongue brushing up against yours, you straighten your back and tilt your head off to the right, desperate to feel him deeper in you. To have more of his skin on yours. Every inch of your body feels like it’s getting iced and burnt at the same time, yet inside it’s as if you have piping hot liquid lust sloshing around.

And then.

“Hun.” You gasp, placing your palms firmly on your boyfriend’s shoulders to pull away. Your eyes snapping to the glowing phone thrown haphazardly onto your pillows. The screen lit up with your brother’s name splayed across it and vibrating with his favourite song “Girl’s Talk” by Jiwoo and Sooyoung.

Mingi just grunts and keeps his teeth latched onto your bottom lip. His large hand slides up behind your neck and tugs you back into his kiss. He’s been itching to kiss you all day. Fingers twitching to finally comb through your meticulously brushed hair and dishevel it from your ponytail. He’s waited nearly four hours to finally get you to himself since the graduation ceremony started.

“Leave it, Hun.”

“But, Gi.” You whine, hands sliding up to his jaw im an effort to break free. “It’s Seonghwa.”

“And? C’mon Hun. Just let me kiss you for fifteen minutes.” He gives you the cutest puppy eyes ever and you try your damn hardest to not fall into his charms.

“We’ve been making out for the past thirty minutes, Gi.”

“Thirty-five minutes then.”

You giggle. Apparently you weren’t immune to whatever Mingi’s powers were, because one pout from him has your resolve crumbling and whittling away. So your lips find their way back to your lover’s and you proceed to give him the affection he asked for. Your ringing phone and ever so worried brother forgotten in the background.

The ringing stopped sometime while you ate each other’s faces out. Maybe it was when you shrugged your blouse off and let Mingi palm at your breasts, or when he paused for a moment to let you lick at his fingertips. Neither of you noticed, too caught up in each other’s tastes and scents. Too addicted to each other.

At some point, Mingi’s pants unbuttoned and your skirt flipped up to expose your (more like Mingi’s) favourite black panties. Mingi was now leaning back on your headboard, hands gripping your hips as you hovered over his clothed erection.

It had been well over thirty five minutes when you started grinding your core onto Mingi. But, really, who’s counting? Not you, and definitely not Mingi who seems to be preoccupied with kneading your ass into clay. Can you blame him? When the swell of your ass fits perfectly into his cupped palms and his fingertips genty dip and dig into your flesh.

Like a moth to a flame, you were sucked into his touch once more. It was all just Mingi… Mingi. Mingi. Your senses filled with him. Your skin wrapped around his, his scent fogging in your mind. You have no choice but to think about Mingi.

Mingi.

“Mingi!” You yelp.

“Y/n!” Seonghwa yells from downstairs, the sound of his feet pattering against the carpet follow the echoes of his voice.

A curse leaves Mingi’s kiss-plumped lips and you have to resist kissing them again. A simple task considering your brother is right down the hallway, making his way up to your room where you’re perched on top of your boyfriend’s hardened dick. Which means you have to hop off and try to make the situation look presentable.

So, with Seonghwa’s footsteps nearing by the second, you grab Mingi’s arm and fling him in the direction of the bathroom. He nearly slips on the tiles but you’ve no time to tend to him, opting to shut the door running towards your closet.

“Mom said– Jesus christ!”

Seonghwa slams your bedroom door close as soon as he shoved it open upon seeing your nearly naked form struggling to button up your shirt.

“I’m changing, you fuck!” The best lie you ever came up with.

“Well, hurry up! Mom and dad are already at the restaurant!”

You tug your skirt down and pat the frizz out of your hair, looking in the mirror to see your skin coloured in red– not from the embarrassment of having your brother walk in on you ‘changing’. At the same time you hear Mingi flush the toilet and he comes out with his face dripping with cold water and a deep blush etched onto his skin, similar to yours.

“Okay, let’s go.” You huff, with Mingi clinging onto your arm. The both of you finally looking decent enough to see your parents. Seonghwa mutters ‘took you long enough’ under his breath before leading the way out of the house.

You’re probably not gonna do that again (spoiler: you did). The amount of embarrassment and shame you’d have been in would probably make you bury yourself alive. And the sheer luck you had for having a brother whose gullible enough to believe your little fib, maybe someone up there was looking over you.

But Seonghwa’s not that gullible (his suspicions only solidifying when you came out hand in hand with your boyfriend), and now he knows that if he ever gets sent to voicemail, he should not try to barge into your room.

dividers and headers are drawn and designed by me.

please reblog if you enjoyed this! since tumblr works on a system of reblogs rather than likes, i would appreciate if you reblogged the content that you liked. thank you so much!

do NOT plagiarize or translate any of my works & thank you for reading.

#heterotragedies #het.traj #het.traj s.mg #|#ateez #ateez x reader #ateez smut #mingi #mingi x reader #mingi smut

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consumeconstantly · 4 years ago

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Those Who Are Kind

1| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 (you are here) | next

Summary: Siblings are the last thing on Marinette’s mind as she begins her frantic search for Tikki. Really, she can’t even consider them siblings, not yet. But they’re along for the ride, whether she wants them to be or not.

Duke doesn’t know what to make of the current situation.

He’s always known that the Waynes are crazy, insane, even, but he loves them all the same, in the begrudging, cautious way he cannot shake. (This approach has served him well over the years, allowing him to avoid multiple schemes that Tim or Jason typically start up to rile up Damian. From there, everything is guaranteed to snowball. The only time things get really bad is when Cass gets involved.) To him, it’s always been a bit uncanny how similar all the brothers looked, despite the fact that none of them shared blood. All of them had the same sharp jaw, piercing blue eyes, chiselled cheekbones and defined bodies. Only Tim and Damian differed slightly, with Tim having a dancer’s figure instead of that of a body builder or demolitions expert, and Damian having green eyes instead of blue. It’s also disconcerting that everybody the Waynes are more intimately involved with have some sort of alter ego. He often joked with other members of the Justice League that heroism ran in Bruce’s blood.

With the new addition of Marinette to their family, he has to say that he’s been proven right.

A girl who had absolutely nothing to do with the Waynes in any capacity other than the fact that she and Bruce share blood becoming a hero. The leader of a team. Fighting supervillains at the age of thirteen.

He’s very, very glad that he was not adopted by or shared blood with Bruce. He doesn’t think he could have handled being a superhero at age thirteen. He can barely handle being Signal now some days, and he’s an adult. The amount of responsibility on Marinette’s shoulders is difficult to understand. To be the sole wielder of magic that can revert an entire city back to its original state. To bring people back from the dead.

Dick is strangely quiet. A car is driving them from a pit stop near a zeta tube to Marinette’s hospital.

Hands down, Dick is the most sane male of the Wayne family, not including Alfred. But there are times when Duke sees the weight that he carries. All the times that he refuses to talk about the burdens that he bears. Moving forward with a smile when he’s in pain. When he gets in a mood like this, he’s hard to read. But given the circumstances, it’s fairly clear exactly what’s bothering him.

“He’s known about her this entire time,” Dick says, tinted windows allowing Duke a glance at his expression, carefully devoid of any telling emotions. “Nineteen years. He kept her a secret.”

“It’s Bruce.” The man is known for keeping secrets.

“Yeah, but Marinette is family. She should have been, at least. And now…”

Now she’s all alone when she should be surrounded by people that love her, praising her for her victory, for how she shouldered so much responsibility at such a young age. But by bringing her to a hospital in America, she’s been cut off from her team, and any support system she should have had is gone.

“You and her,” Duke says, looking for a way to comfort him. “You’ll get along. You’re similar, after all.” After they brought Gabriel and Lila to the a top security prison and sent Emilie to a hospital that couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, they got two files from Tim. One detailing Ladybug and all of her exploits. The second, detailing Marinette’s life.

Duke has watched the videos. Has watched how Ladybug leads by example, comes up with the plan and begins the execution. How she shoulders more battles than she should.

He’s seen Marinette pull people together with a smile on her face, even while she’s running on empty after a strenuous akuma attack.

Dick and Marinette are alike.

“We’re too much alike,” Dick says. “I suspected for a long time that Bruce had another kid that he wasn’t telling us about, but I thought that if he was keeping her away from us, then maybe she’d have a shot at leading a good life. A normal life. Not the one she got. Sabine’s— Bruce’s biological daughter shouldn’t be somebody like me. She deserves better.”

Duke is acutely aware that Dick’s parents were also murdered, but whatever relation he had with Sabine is something he’s never been willing to talk about. There are pictures in his apartment of a petite Asian woman with a soft smile standing next to him, but whenever asked about her, Dick never gives a straight answer.

“Nobody has the ability to change the past.” Duke claps a hand on his friend’s shoulder. He sags imperceptibly under the weight.

Well— actually, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities, given the fact that magic, aliens, and metahumans all coexisted, supplemented by the fact that multiple members of Marinette’s team do have the ability to travel back in time, but that’s another matter entirely. There’s not a lot of information on the Miraculous, and all of their knowledge is coming from Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Zatara, and even the three of them don’t know everything.

“But you have the chance to do good by her. Be a good older brother, like I know you are.”

A thin smile appears on Dick’s face. “She’s going to need more than just one good influence on her life. And Damian is better, but you saw how he looked at her when Bruce brought her through the Zeta tubes. Tim’s not going to react well either, and Jason is a wild card. She’s not going to get the support she needs if she stays with us.”

Duke crosses his arms, knees brushing up against the back of the car seat. “The only person whose actions you’re responsible for are your own. Don’t worry about them. If they don’t like her, they’ll just avoid her.”

That’s certainly not true— all of the members of the Wayne family are notorious for going hard after all of the things they don’t like. But... it’s comforting to hear. Sometimes temporary and known lies are much nicer than harsh realities.

She’s gone.

All of her belongings are missing, the IV needle is hanging from the stand, the window open, and Marinette is missing from her bed.

At least she left a note?

Be back soon — Marinette

“Great,” Duke mutters under his breath. “Another incredibly vague, cryptic Wayne.”

Dick’s face turns to ash. “Her legs. Her head. She can’t go out so soon. Hold on, maybe Barbara can pull up some footage.”

“On the bright side, there’s no blood,” Duke says.

“That’s not a bright side.”

“It is,” Duke argues. “She fell in the worst places possible, right on top of that broken glass casket. If she’s not bleeding that clearly means she didn’t pull her stitches on her mad escape out.”

When Ladybug fell, they’re not exactly sure what happened, because the screen showed Ladybug collapsing almost gracefully. When they arrived on the scene, she flickered between Ladybug and Marinette as her earrings beeped. Her legs were slashed from falling on the glass with a seemingly unnatural force— simply falling would not have garnered cuts that large— and her head was twisted at an odd angle, debris bloodied beneath her.

Somehow, the Miraculous Cure seemed to be working backwards. Not from the epicenter out, but rather from the edge of the damage, in. It worked slowly, every mile taking minutes instead of mere seconds. It hadn’t happened before in any of the battles.

It was useful in apprehending Hawkmoth and Pavona, who were still knocked out. But Marinette, even after the Miraculous Cure washed over her, didn’t get healed. Her injuries didn’t revert. There was still a gash on her stomach from Hawkmoth’s cane, still muscles exposed on the back of her legs and blood on her neck. When she was first brought in, the doctors feared that she may be permanently incapacitated.

Good at keeping to her word at least. She came swinging through the window with worry on her face and grief in her eyes.

“I need to go back to Paris,” she says.

Dick will undoubtedly say no. He’s a very protective person, and Marinette is the center of his current efforts.

But she doesn’t look injured. He eyes her stance. She’s standing with no effort, walks with no limp. No hospital dress, no blood on her neck, no bruises in all of the places he was expecting them to be. Marinette does not look like she just faced a world ending threat less than twenty four hours ago. She certainly doesn’t look like she’s permanently lost the use of her legs. There’s the familiar Wayne Brand Stubbornness in her eyes— no way she’s not Bruce’s kid— that tells him that she’s going to get to Paris one way or another, and that they’re either lucky they were even notified in the first place or that she wants to use a resource that they have that she does not have access to. It’s fairly obvious what that resource is, considering that Paris is nine hours away by any normal plane and it sounds like she wants to get there in minutes, and not hours. Duke also knows that if they don’t take what she’s offering now, she’ll use an alternative method that definitely won’t be as nice or clear cut.

He jumps in before Dick can say anything. “We’ll take you as long as we go with you every step of the way.”

Oh, he’s going to get in so much trouble for doing this. Dick is looking at him with his Disapproving Dad glare, and he can imagine Bruce going into brooding silence when he hears that Duke allowed this to happen.

Marinette’s lips pinch together, but she nods. “Where’s the nearest zeta tube?”

Barbara gets Dick’s text and sighs in frustration.

She’s already got her hands full with watching Tim, who’s spiralling trying to find information about the Miraculous, muttering under his breath in the way he does when he gets a particularly hard case to crack. He’s gone through six cups of coffee in the last hour, and he kicked off his research with a combination of 5 Hour Energy, Monster, three packets of sugar, and 10 caffeine shots. Soon, she’ll have to start limiting his caffeine intake, but right now it’s clear that any attempt to get him to stop his research now will fail spectacularly. At least she’s not in charge of Damian and Jason. Wherever they are, they’re definitely on the move and not happy.

She never thought she'd be able to say she’s happy about being paralyzed from the waist down, but she certainly doesn’t want to be chasing after one of the two hellions. Cass definitely has her hands full and whoever’s watching Jason— wait, is anybody even watching Jason? Typically Roy gets stuck with Jason-sitting duty, but he’s been out for a while.

Barbara groans. Jason is probably on his own, wreaking havoc.

Great.

She’ll deal with that later, even though she has no doubt she’ll regret that decision, but if Marinette is gone from her room, Dick needs the footage, and somebody needs to find where she is. The nurse put in her latest report that her legs were almost healed and that she didn’t show any signs of a concussion, but Marinette was in bad shape when she got admitted to the hospital. Even though Barbara doubts that there was any misdiagnosis, given that Bruce sprung for a VIP room in one of the pricier hospitals, in a world where magic and aliens are present, who knows what’s true or not.

“Tibet!” Tim jumps up from his hunched over position for the first time in hours. “I’m going to Tibet, the closest zeta tubes are three hours by car away, but I can get somebody to loan Wayne Industries a helicopter while I’m over there.”

“Sit down, Tim.” Barbara takes her glasses off and pinches the bridge of her nose. Why can’t Bruce rein in his children? Why is she the one stuck babysitting? “Marinette left her hospital room.”

That certainly gets Tim to put the brakes on his movements towards the zeta tube in the bat cave.

“What?”

“I said, she left her hospital room. Just sit down while I send the information over. It’s not going to do you any good to rush into things anyways.”

A quick review of the surrounding CCTV shows that Marinette didn’t travel far, just around the hospital. She’s looking for something, calling out for it, too. Barbara grabs that file and slows it down so she can read her lips. “Dickie? Do she and Dick know each other already?”

A quick text back to Dick reveals that Marinette has already returned to the room and—

Oh, hell.

“Well,” Barbara pushes her laptop away from her, letting Tim watch the files she’s pulled up. “It looks like we’re taking a family trip to Paris.”

Somehow, Marinette almost manages to lose all four of them within the first four minutes of roaming around Paris.

Luckily, their family has an almost absurd amount of luck between all of them (not all of it good) and the person Barbara was half sure she could only find in prison, beating up Hawkmoth and Pavona, runs into Marinette on the streets and herds her back to them.

“Lose something?” Jason asks, arm slung around Marinette’s shoulder, the smaller, younger girl looking rather upset at having her plans thrown off.

“I told them that they could follow me,” Marinette argues without much real bite. It’s not my fault if they can’t keep up, is the clear meaning of her statement.

Again, Barbara is very impressed that the barely nineteen year old somehow managed to shake off vigilantes with decades of experience with ease. But it is, at least, partially due to her disability. Every time she goes out in her wheelchair, her heart aches a little, especially as the civilians she passes eye her with pity. Barbara doesn’t want pity. Doesn’t need pity. She shouldn’t feel anything when people look at her like she can’t keep up, because she can keep up.

Most of the time, anyways.

It doesn’t matter how she uses her tech skills to modify her wheelchair and deck it out with all the equipment she could ever need, or that she can easily get up to speeds rivalling sports cars for short periods of time before the power runs out. When she’s stuck in her wheelchair, she loses the maneuverability she had when she wasn’t paralyzed.

She couldn’t follow Marinette through the alleyways because she was stuck. Barbara was the one who noticed her escape first. If only she were more capable, she could have—

But it’s okay now. Jason ran into her. Marinette is back with them.

“I need to search for something, and none of you can help.” She’s not intentionally being rude when she says it, and if anything, sounds apologetic. Barbara sees the similarities between Marinette and Bruce. It makes a lot of sense that the two of them are father and daughter, when the two of them are so insistent on keeping major issues to themselves. Marinette twists herself out from underneath Jason’s arm, clutching her purse. Her head doesn’t move, but her eyes are wild.

“We can help,” soothes Duke, ever the voice of reason. “You know who we are.”

“And I’m guessing you’ve all either deduced who I am or have been told my identity,” counters Marinette. “Which means you should know why I can’t have you helping me.”

Barbara and Duke exchange pointed glances.

“That’s not really clear to us, actually,” says Barbara. Marinette isn’t moving, but the way her shoulders tense makes her believe that the younger girl is ready to run at the drop of a hat.

A small group of people from the parade on the streets tumbles into the alleyway they’re resting in. They smell like cheap booze and sweat.

“What are all of you doing in this alley?” one says, after he finished vomiting up his last (very colorful) meal. “You should be out there partying with the rest of us! Celebrating Ladybug and her team.”

“Fuck Hawkmoth and Pavona,” says another solemnly, with neon face paint and pigtails with glitter string intertwined. “Their defeat should be celebrated by even the darkest souls.”

Jason, easily amused by their antics, looks very willing to join them. “Yeah Marinette, we should be celebrating Ladybug not—”

As one, everybody looks at the place where Marinette was, just moments ago. The alley is decidedly empty of a small asian girl with blue eyes and pigtails.

“Fuck,” Jason curses.

“Fuck is right,” Duke agrees, placing a hand over his temple.

Marinette manages to disappear for three hours.

Three full hours.

“She’s good,” Tim says, typing into the holographic computer embedded into his sleeve.

Paris’ CCTVs are painfully easy to hack into, though he suspects that the lack of attention to them may have to do with the fact that everybody in the city is celebrating. Policemen, politicians, artists, students, scientists— people from all walks of life are in the streets today, screaming and shouting and being free for the first time in years.

He spies more than just a few dozen people bawling their eyes out within a few minutes. But that’s not surprising, considering how long Parisians have had to suppress their emotions for.

Dick and Barbara are still in the midst of profiling Marinette, trying to determine the most likely places where she’d stop by, either as Ladybug or herself. All of Ladybug’s usual haunts are decidedly devoid of the young heroine, though Tim does manage to catch a good amount of footage of the other young heroes like Carapace and Rena Rouge, who are most definitely in a relationship based on their makeout session on top of the eiffel tower (one of the first places Tim checked), Viperion, who seems to be the only one from Ladybug’s team to be seeking out the crowd which seems rather atypical considering that the hero never frequented interviews or was spotted on news coverage all that frequently, and Chat Noir and Queen Bee who Jason insisted were in a relationship as well, though the rest of them believed they were only embracing each other out of comfort— Chat Noir looks like he’s been crying for hours, and Queen Bee looks like she’s barely holding it together.

Ryuko has not shown up on camera once today. Neither has Ladybug.

The second place Tim checks is the bakery. She is not there either, though another girl is. It doesn’t seem like the girl has any ill intent, but Duke is more than happy to pull up past files to see if she’s been there before, if she has any reason to be there, and who exactly she is.

Just as Barbara and Dick are debating the chances that Marinette would be at Le Grande Paris, she walks past one of the cameras focused on Tom & Sabine’s Boulangerie. Tim has the system rigged up so that any facial matches for Marinette automatically alerts the room. He hadn’t been able to replicate that with Ladybug’s face for some bizarre reason which is why he, Barbara, Dick, and Jason are manually combing through the areas where Dick and Barbar think she may be (magic is why, but Tim has always believed that technology can be used against and with most forms of magic) so it’s lucky that she enters as Marinette.

“Kagami Tsurugi,” Duke says triumphantly. “She visited often when Tom and Sabine were still alive. Potential candidate to represent France or Japan for Sabre in the next Olympics. Definitely friends with Marinette.”

“Thank God,” sighs Dick. “Now let’s get over there.”

It’s truly, truly unfortunate that they set up shop quite a distance away from the bakery.

They take too long to arrive.

Perhaps it was a mistake, telling Kagami first.

No, not just perhaps. It was a mistake. A bad one.

But Kagami was pushing so hard, and Marinette was so tired and so alone without Tikki at her side, without the knowledge that her parents would be waiting for her. Kagami pushed and pushed and pushed about why the house felt so empty, why there was dust on the floor, why the bakery was closed for so long, and where were Tom and Sabine? Why weren’t they there for the team yesterday, when the battle was won, when they knew how important it was to be there for Adrien who had just lost all three of his parental figures?

The moment the words fall from Marinette's lips, she knows she shouldn’t have revealed it at that moment, because Kagami draws in on herself, lips turning downwards, hands curling into fists.

Kagami has come a long way from the girl she was in lycèe. The thrill of victory is still something she enjoys, but not something she needs to feel secure in her place in the world. She has trouble expressing her emotions, but when it comes down to it, she communicates everything necessary to understand why.

With the news of Tom and Sabine’s death, she withdraws into herself, shifts back into that thirteen year old Marinette first met. Logic and rationale thrown to the wind in favor of cold anger.

It’s no secret that Ryuko, Ladybug, and Viperion are the main strategists of their team. Viperion, out of his duty of using Second Chance and his ability to keep a level head in the face of constant death. Ladybug out of necessity as her position as team leader and the power of Lucky Charm. Theoretically, the two of them should have been enough. But over the years, Kagami became Marinette's favored confidante; though Ladybug trusts all of her team to keep a tight hold on any information she gives them, Kagami is one of the few who is able to pick apart a given situation and transform the monsters they face into manageable pieces.

Today, it is Kagami who has broken to pieces. Very angry, razor sharp shards that seek to hurt.

“You lie to the media, tell them a pretty tale of how they died due to a break in. Why do you avoid pinning their deaths on Lila as you should? To absolve a quality woman from guilt?”

Marinette can’t look Kagami in the eyes.

Her parents deserved a peaceful death. To pass on in old age, hand in hand. Not looking on as a family member died, in fear of what would happen next for their daughter.

“The police know. The judges know,” Marinette protests weakly, but without much eight behind her words.

Kagami just scoffs. “Tom and Sabine were kind people. To not tell the media what truly happened— that’s preventing Lila from getting the full force of what’s coming to her. What happens if she gets out of prison one day? Without any real deaths to her name, she could just flee to another country to escape it all. And when another person loses their life because of her…”

She doesn’t need to finish her sentence. If somebody else gets injured in any way, shape or form at the hands of Lila Rossi, it’s Marinette’s fault. Marinette gets what Kagami is trying to say. She thinks the same thing, after all.

“My parents would not want their death publicized in that manner.” It’s the truth, but it’s said so weakly that the words come off as little more than a weak defense, and Kagami takes the words and twists their truth.

“You know little of your parents, considering that you’re their daughter.” Kagami stands stock still, not a single extra muscle moving. “Perhaps if you spent more time with them as Marinette instead of unsuccessfully gallivanting around as Ladybug, you’d have realized that Tom and Sabine admire truth above all else, even if it is painful.”

Kagami does not ask a single question about where Marinette was last night, or how Marinette felt over the loss of her parents or when she saw all those she held dear lying still on the ground after Hawkmoth and Pavona’s final attacks. She just purses her lips and sweeps out the door.

And then she’s gone, and Marinette is alone once more.

The bakery is bone-achingly quiet.

Every step Marinette takes creates such a disturbance in the peace that moving hurts.

But she can’t stay here. She can’t stay here. She does not deserve to stay here. Kagami is right. Marinette was a bad daughter. She could have prevented their death, could have given them justice sooner, could have—

And Marinette can’t breathe. She tries to, she tries so hard to, but she chokes.

She kneels down on the floor— Kagami is right again, the place is dusty, because Marinette couldn’t bring herself to use the living room and kitchen without her parents, could barely bring herself to sleep in her bedroom because she knew that her parents were not sleeping soundly in the bed below hers— and scrabbles at her throat, vision coming in and out.

Her legs burn. She knows that during the final battle, her legs were cut towards the end of it, and they should be healed, she should be okay now, she’s better than this, she’s—

Somebody gathers her in their arms. They smell slightly of Lotus flowers, just like Maman, and cradle her ever so gently.

Marinette’s eyes open— black hair, greyish eyes filled with understanding and love and—

She can breathe again.

She falls asleep.

“Cass?” Dick’s eyes widen at her unexpected appearance at Marinette’s home.

“I thought you were on Damian guard duty,” Barbara says, fixating on the red around Marinette’s eyes and the barely dried tear tracks on her face.

“Where’s that Kagami girl?” Jason scuffs his shoes on the hardware floor, silently marking the footprints on the floor and getting a general idea of what occurred before they were able to get here based on Marinette’s current state and the other girl’s absence. “I want to have some words with her.”

Cass inclines her head sharply, eye sparking with anger. Jason’s fists rise unconsciously— Cass rarely gets angry, and whenever she gets angry at a specific person, that means they’ve done something very, very wrong— ready to hunt down Kagami. Marinette sniffles and shifts in Cass’ one armed embrace, to which Cass places a finger over her lip and shakes her head, a universal sign to be quiet.

Jason scowls but settles down.

They’re quiet as they wait for Marinette to wake.

@biodad-bruce-month

Maribat tag list(to be added onto this pls send me an ask/dm): @our-precipreciousss @my-dear-friend-anxiety

Who Are You (and what will you become) tag list (to be added here just comment): @anjuschiffer @theunquiet-dead @certainmuffinbagelcalzone @cresentmo0n @allulily @myazael @zalladane @rebecarojas07 @keepingupwiththemalfoys @frieddonutsweets @all-mights-asscheeks @thornalchemist23 @trippingovermyfeet @jiso-lee @redscarlet95 @ira-sairain @screechingflapbiscuitpeach @ramos123 @cutechip @theunquiet-dead @sleep-deprived-aroace @enternalempires @lilkymilky @woe-is-me0 @officiallydarkgeek @miyla-lokidottir @queencommonsense @demonicbusiness @iamablinkmarvelarmy

@emark7 (i will have the edited version of these on ao3 eventually but i think the link to ch 1 on this one works)

where i ended this doesn’t feel very good but ehhhhhhhhhh my writing process is summary then word vomit that barely correlates which means nothing makes sense unless i edit but looking back at my work makes me cringe so at a crossroads yayyy

also can you guys tell which prompts ive written these for because i’m curious

#bio!dad bruce wayne month 2020 #bio!dad bruce #maribat #marinette dupain cheng #bruce wayne #duke thomas #jason todd #dick grayson #damian wayne #barbara gordon #tim drake #cassandra cain #batfam

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popvlcr · 3 months ago

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svea watched dax look over at carmen, who had looked over at dax. it was clear that the pair were still very much in love with one another. by daxton's body language alone, carmen was their safe haven and someone who kept them grounded and clear minded. svea could tell a lot about a person with their body language alone. especially right now with daxton playing with the rings on their fingers. that already signaled to the femme that they were nervous and uncomfortable. " i don't mean to make you...uncomfortable daxton. i know it's such a weird position to be in right now. not every day you get someone confronting you about your actions, or your twin's. as i said, im not here to ambush you. im just here to not only tell you how ashton feels but where your mind is at and how you're feeling. svea wanted daxton to at least trust her. ironically enough, she was not sure yet if she could trust daxton but that was something for her to decide at a later time. " ashton and i...we had our own hurdle we dealt with in the past and it definitely was far worse than me talking to you." she wasn't there yet with daxton to reveal how ashton and her got together. " let me worry about ashton and how they'll react." thankfully ashton has not gone off at her for anything. this could be different. but she was ready for that. hearing them out, svea had to relate in a way when it came to her daughter, nia. nia had her own demons she fought after finding out her mother and ashton were having an affair. nia eventually got over it and accepted svea and ashton together. " my eldest spiraled herself. not in the way you did but she definitely was meaner and you'd think it's cause she's a teenager but it was different. ive never seen her this angry or upset with me. staying out past curfew, back talking. it was awful." she paused for a moment. she wanted to relate to daxton in a way that ashton probably couldn't. svea had hoped that daxton could see she was trying to connect with them. " i was the reason that caused my daughter that much pain. she hasn't forgiven me for what i had done, but she has moved on from it. her actions in the past does not define her now." she placed a hand on daxton's wrist. " i guess what i am trying to say here is that i get it to an extent. i do believe that you and ash deserve to sit down and talk things out. and if there is anything i can do to try and persuade ashton to talk to you, i will." the femme removed her hand from daxton's wrist. " like i said, i didn't know you then so i have no reason to be upset or angry or mad at you. i can only get to know the person now. addiction is a disease, dax. and diseases can be treated. carmen tells us you're going to therapy and going to AA meetings. that is such an incredible first steps and you should be proud of yourself for going. there's no rush to recovery so as long as you are still getting the help you deserve, that is what matters."

when svea had reached out to them, they didn't quite know what to expect other than it obviously had something to do with ashton. the woman was stunning and it was clear as to why ashton would have been attracted to her. they were glad their twin had found someone who had their best interests front of mind, it was something they deserved more than anything. svea was ashton's carmen and daxton had to respect that. "i hadn't planned on staying, it was only meant to be for a couple of days until i could get enough money to get a little food and make it to the next town," they shrugged, "i didn't want anyone to know i was here." their eyes noticed carmen working the register, "not even her."

hearing ashton referred to as part of someone else's family other than their own was slightly jarring for daxton. it had been the two of them for so long, leaning on each other, being there for each other. it really hit home how much time had passed, how much things had changed. they shook their head, "i don't think that, you're just looking out for ash, i get it." and they did, they'd hurt them and couldn't be trusted. it would be helpful to have insight into where ashton's head was at. it shouldn't have been a surprise that ashton didn't know svea was talking to them, "i think hesitant is putting it mildly." which they have every right. "look, svea, i really don't want this to bring trouble for you with ashton for you talking to me."

as they were dealing with their own triggers being back to a place that brought them so much pain, they could understand why being back would trigger ashton. they'd brought their twin so much pain. as svea began to list the things they had done, daxton winced, their hands moving to play with the rings on their fingers, their nervous tic as the anxiety began to build up within them. for a moment dax focused on their breathing, something carmen had shown them. they were nothing but embarrassed about what they had done to ashton and wished every day they could take it all back. "i was in a really dark place and i know that's no excuse but that person isn't who i am. that person was driven by an addiction i couldn't control. i didn't want help and i was self destructing. i broke the only two people that ever cared about me. i don't deserve ashton's forgiveness but i need them to know that i want to try to fix what i broke, as long as it takes."

#softdrabbles.

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dweemeister · 4 years ago

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The Daydreamer (1966)

By the 1960s, Christmas television specials were in vogue in the United States. Yet this recent phenomenon had yet to yield a true cultural touchstone. On December 6, 1964, the first Christmas special mainstay aired on NBC. Produced by a fledgling animation studio, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer put Rankin/Bass, named after co-founders Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass, into the public consciousness. Rankin/Bass’ brand of stop-motion animation (“Animagic”) was mostly outsourced to Japanese studio MOM Productions in Tokyo, under the direction of Tadahito Mochinaga. With the windfall of Rudolph, Rankin/Bass and MOM Productions delved into the realm of feature theatrical films. This review concerns their second feature film, The Daydreamer – a stop motion animation/live-action hybrid based on Hans Christian Andersen’s stories. The Daydreamer has starpower in its cast that no Rankin/Bass production had yet matched. But as one might expect from a Rankin/Bass film, there are narrative flaws abound. The Daydreamer, episodic in nature and alternating between live-action and animation scenes, suffers due to the inconsistent quality of the handful of Hans Christian Andersen adaptations it has and the kitschy live-action acting.

The young Hans Christian Andersen (“Chris”; Paul O’Keefe) is the son of a cobbler (Jack Gilford). Papa Andersen often has to face the verbal tirades of frequent customer Mrs. Klopplebobbler (Margaret Hamilton; it is difficult not to think of Hamilton’s portrayal of the Wicked Witch here). His struggling business often means he cannot pay the gangling Pie Man (Ray Bolger; yet another Wizard of Oz star). To take him away from these troubles, Chris will let his imagine run wild while napping. If he can only just find the mythical Garden of Paradise, all these troubles might vanish. One evening, the Sandman (voiced by Cyril Ritchard) promises him to guide him there. Along the way, Chris is subject to dreams that may seem familiar to the viewer. These dreams shift away from live-action into the signature Rankin/Bass animation – adapting “The Little Mermaid”, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”*, “Thumbelina”, and “The Garden of Paradise”. Elements of “The Ugly Duckling” and “Little Claus and Big Claus” also appear.

Among the many voice actors during these animation sequences are Hayley Mills (The Little Mermaid); Burl Ives (Neptune – I have never heard Ives’ voice so devoid of jaunt before); Tallulah Bankhead (the sea witch); Terry-Thomas (the first tailor); Victor Borge (the second tailor); Ed Wynn (the Emperor); Patty Duke (Thumbelina); and Boris Karloff (the Rat).

The film’s adaptations of Andersen’s tales differ in that Andersen himself becomes a character in each of the stories. The Daydreamer approaches the stories as if the ideas are only just forming in the young Chris’ head, to be written and published when he is an adult. Within these dreams-someday-to-be-stories, Chris is largely a passive character. He takes instruction from the central figures of his future tales, never really asserting himself or asking basic questions about the misadventures he goes through. Chris acts as if lost in his own imagination – which fits the conceit of the film. So when he awakens into the real world, the film’s pacing slams the brakes. In the real world, everyone except Chris is a caricature, somehow less realistic than the individuals appearing in the daydreams. The transitions between animation and live-action will take the viewer out of the film because of the unceasing manic acting in the latter, as opposed to the charming puppetry of the former. As such, The Daydreamer’s weaknesses lie almost entirely with the live-action scenes – too consciously playing to the audience and over-the-top in their absurdity.

In an era of American animation defined by Disney on the screen and Hanna-Barbera on television, Rankin/Bass carves out its own niche in how it tells its stories. The meta humor and fourth wall breaking of Hanna-Barbera’s works (a legacy of the duo’s work at MGM) makes no appearances here. Disney’s clean-cut fairytale endings also do not apply. The Daydreamer’s adaptation of “The Little Mermaid” does not have the gruesome premise as Andersen’s original fairytale, but it retains the ending’s heartbreak. There appears to be no alterations to “The Emperor’s New Clothes” – which includes Chris, but he just feels superfluous to the plot and to the tale’s keen comedy. Each of the film’s segments bring Chris closer to the final animated sequence, “The Garden of Paradise”. The adaptation of that tale sanitizes its deathly overtures for a devil-like creature, but keeps the ambiguous, open-ended conclusion. By maintaining the original conclusion, “The Garden of Paradise” is a curious coda for The Daydreamer – a film that ends as abruptly as its several transitions, like a daydream.

The Daydreamer’s live-action sets benefit, however, due to the fact many of its scenes were shot at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The World’s Fair pavilions used in this film mimic a feel of small-town, nineteenth century Europe more realistically than a Hollywood soundstage might. The production design for the animated dream sequences, too, are mesmerizing. Perhaps this is best exemplified in “The Little Mermaid”. There, the special effects work make it appear as if the whole sequence was shot underwater, rather than a room that contained blue lights streaming into Neptune’s palace. Where are the strings and wires suspending the puppets in mid-air while they “swim”? To the animators’ credit, there are none to be found. Neptune’s palace is one of the grander sets constructed for a Rankin/Bass production; its imposing walls and generous empty spaces reflect a sense of regal grandeur. That royal otherworldliness does not extend to “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, but many of the same production design decisions carry over. Rankin/Bass and MOM Productions are obviously working with more money and manpower for these animated scenes than in the likes of Rudolph or their many holiday television specials. The sense of scale and grandiosity seen here in The Daydreamer and Mad Monster Party? (1967) would rarely, if ever, be replicated for television. And it is also obvious that the filmmakers put the money into the animation and for paying headline-worthy actors, rather than for any writers able to string the animated and live-action halves together.

Seven songs comprise The Daydreamer’s musical soundtrack. Composed by Maury Laws and Jules Bass, most of the songs are forgettable once your viewing is done (including Robert Goulet singing the title song over the opening credits, despite the fact I admire Goulet’s voice). But there are notable exceptions. Sung by Hayley Mills at the end of “The Little Mermaid”, “Wishes and Teardrops” brings the segment to a worthy close. Her loved ignored, the Little Mermaid sings this lament – backed with percussion straight from a ‘60s love ballad and timeless swelling strings – for herself:

Wishes and teardrops Won’t make him love me. He’s gone and he’ll never return. Does he know how teardrops can burn, When they fall for a wish That can never come true?

In the film’s final third, “Luck to Sell” injects a jolt of energy sorely missing from many of the other live-action scenes. The song itself is simple and the singing just avoids being flat, but when paired with the energetic choreography from Paul O’Keefe and company, it elevates itself from the rest of the soundtrack (save “Wishes and Teardrops”).

Not often will a viewer encounter a film with two sets of opening credits. I’m not writing about films that have an overture that transition to opening credits (an entirely different approach that modern filmmakers should utilize more), but two sets of opening credits that list the names of the actors involved. For the first set of credits, caricaturist Al Hirschfeld (uncredited) was hired to draw caricatures of the various actors and actresses appearing in, or lending their voices to, The Daydreamer. The Daydreamer is the second of three films that Hirschfeld was involved in. The first, appearing as himself uncredited, was in Main Street to Broadway (1953); his third and final film was as an artistic consultant on the “Rhapsody in Blue” segment (which was influenced by his caricatures) in Fantasia 2000.

Rankin/Bass’ ventures into feature film animation peaked several months later with Mad Monster Party? After that and the unfortunate production of The Wacky World of Mother Goose (1967; a traditionally animated eyesore), Rankin/Bass almost completely dedicated itself to its animated television specials. The Daydreamer, distributed by the now-defunct Embassy Pictures and currently owned by Sony Pictures Television (the ownership of the rights to Rankin/Bass’ features are exasperatingly scattered), has not been widely seen when compared to Mad Monster Party?, let alone Rankin/Bass’ television specials. If one can find a serviceable print of The Daydreamer, the viewing experience will be a valuable glimpse into the studio’s collaboration with MOM Productions. A Rankin/Bass fan that has only known the studio through its television specials will see their work operating with higher production values; Rankin/Bass novices can experience a dimension of animated filmmaking too often considered an afterthought.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

* “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was adapted twice by Rankin/Bass. The second adaptation is the heart of the television special The Enchanted World of Danny Kaye (1972), starring Danny Kaye. That adaptation of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is distinct from the one that appears in The Daydreamer. The Danny Kaye special’s adaptation has a more developed storyline, completely different voice cast, and completely different soundtrack.

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bloopbyoop · 4 years ago

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weep woop

ayo. ive read my scheduled email and its time for freewriting shit again. lmao. I want this post to be like a small light from a lit match stick inside a very hollow, icy, and numbing cave. (sounds cartoonish right? I know. Im obsessed with Adventure Time.) I want all people to be genuinely happy. Spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Upon reaching my 24th anniversary in this world, I finally learned how to truly embrace all my emotions. Some are more overwhelming than the other, but we have to heed in our treacherous yet perplexing minds that everything is fleeting and we are in control. The feeling of extreme sadness fades, but so does joyful states. Everything can change in a matter of minutes or years. You are in control of all your emotions. You are in control of all your life choices. Your actions. Your words. Your perspective. It feels weird to actually write about it. I've wanted to talk about it. I never wanted help from anyone as I firmly believed that I was alone. Sure, I have a family and friends, but it is hard to see that when your head is clouded with negativity. I've even come to the point where I was too overwhelmed, I found being physically hurt less painful. The pain I felt distracted me from what I was thinking. My mind tended to go bonkers. lmao. But bro, I was so good at concealing my bonkers mind. It's easy to fake any emotion that you have. Slap anything sunshine-y or happy to anything and people would believe you. It went on for years. Long story short, thousands of bracelets collected, it became worse. The physical pain could no longer withhold the emotional pain. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't stop thinking. And voila! I found a good amount of self help books (from tumblr) and novels. Novels that brought me to different places. Self-help books that made me understand what I feel and what to do. I've read that taking the easy way out will leave everyone sad. AND IN THE FIRST PLACEEEEEE, I NEVER WANT THATTTTTTT. I want everyone to be happy. I would act foolish and do dumb shit to make everyone happy in a heartbeat. So, that idea made me push a few more years. Later on, the crippling shit came crawling back again to my head, sooooooo I needed new shit to keep me distracted again. Films, series, music, and short clips from YouTube helped me out a lot. Every single time that my mind is going to think like anything that can think of, even to the point that I was just going to think that I might be hungry, I'd watch something. There's just something about silence for me. Because of this new habit of mine, I've learned more about myself. I love different types of things. I like horror. I like thriller. I like comedy. I like romance. I love all types of films, but there is something about the horror genre that interests me. I still can't point out what, but I love watching horror films. With regards to music, I've learned that I love Indie, Punk Rock, Rap, and Pop. We all can't like a specific genre. It's stupid to ask "what genre of music do you like?". It's not actually stupid-stupid, it's just stupid. Ya know? Anyway, passing this phase, I needed to find something again because it's not doing the shit that it was supposed to, I tried investing more time on video games. By investing more, I mean a whole shit lot. I love video games since I was young cuz.... u know.... they keep u... try to guess it! oh yeah. you got that right! distracted! I love the aggressive plays and trashtalks that my friends and I make. The short stories we tell one another. The rants. The lame jokes. The late night we sound drunk but we are not drunk jokes. The roleplays. The lame jokes. The memes. And once again, The lame jokes. Something about lame jokes and the laughs and curses after that always gets me every single time. Oh shoot. Yup Yup. Few years later, I finally noticed the pattern that my sadness is temporary. I got over it one way or the other (or another. depends on how you wanna read it. i dont wanna say another cause i might write about one direction like what im doing now so-). Happiness is temporary as well. But, we are the ones who are actually in control of our emotions. If you wanna feel sad, be sad for a while. You're getting too sad? Try hanging out with your funny friends. Can't do that? Find an alternative. Watch a movie, knit a sweater. Anything your mind could think of as long as it will keep you mentally distracted from being physically and mentally hurt. I do have a few notes though. We cannot and should never assume what people are going through. It may be petty for you, but it may be very crucial to them. So never everrrr say things like: -Some people have it worse than you -At least you have ..... These sheetsss are annoying as heckkk and could really down someone. I know it is not your intention to annoy but people react differently. alsooooooo, it is not okay or normal to hate on things for bandwagon. that is just plainly crazy and stupid. let people enjoy things. anddddddd never suppress your emotions. admit what you feel inside and try to think of a way to resolve ittttt. keeping it to yourself will just make it worseeeeee. find your own outlettttttttt. hihihi ️ alsooooo. being more spiritually full with God's words and ideas really help me to be spiritually happy. ps. im christian but i dont discredit other religion and even applaud other religion's ideas and beliefs. this is a really long, selfish post so i might as well recommend some things I like : Songs with their lyrics that made me go through life. “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” -All These Things That I've Done, The Killers “It's not too late, I'm still right here” -Breaking Your Own Heart, Kelly Clarkson "And the salt in my wounds / Isn't burning any more than it used to / It's not that I don't feel the pain / It's just I'm not afraid of hurting anymore / And the blood in these veins / Isn't pumping any less than it ever has / And that's the hope I have / The only thing I know that's keeping me alive" -Last Hope, Paramore “There is not a single word in the whole world / That could describe the hurt / The dullest knife just sawing back and forth / And ripping through the softest skin there ever was / How were you to know?” -Hate to See Your Heartbreak, Paramore "It's holding on, though the road's long / And seeing light in the darkest things And when you stare at your reflection / Finally knowing who it is / I know that you'll thank God you did" -1800, Logic "Did some things you can't speak of / But at night you live it all again / You wouldn't be shattered on the floor now / If only you had seen what you know now then" -Innocent, Taylor Swift (My bb) "10 months sober, I must admit / Just because you're clean don't mean you don't miss it / 10 months older, I won't give in / Now that I'm clean I'm never gonna risk it // Rain came pouring down when I was drowning / That's when I could finally breathe / And by morning gone was any trace of you, I think I am finally clean" -Clean, Taylor Swift “I guess I always knew / That I had all the strength to make it through.” -Believe in Me, Demi Lovato "I'm addicted to the madness / I'm a daughter of the sadness / I've been here too many times before / Been abandoned and I'm scared now / I can't handle another fallout / I am fragile, just washed upon the shore / They forget me, don't see me / When they love me, they leave me" -I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me, Demi Lovato “I'm overwhelmed / I need a voice to echo / I need a light to take me home / I need a star to follow / I don't know” -Nightingale, Demi Lovato "I'm a walking travesty / But I'm smiling at everything. // Arrogant boy, Love yourself so no one has to." -Therapy, All Time Low "I tried it once before but I didn't get too far / I felt a lot of pain but it didn't stop my heart. / But maybe I'm alive 'cause I didn't really wanna die / But nothing very special ever happens in my life / Take the blade away from me I am a freak, I am afraid that / All the blood escaping me won't end the pain / And I'll be haunting all the lives that cared for me / I died to be the white ghost / Of the man that I was meant to be" -Ghost, Badflower "Are the pieces of you / In the pieces of me? / I'm just so scared / You're who I'll be / When I erupt / Just like you do / They look at me / Like I look at you" -DNA, Lia Marie Johnson Movies and series to try : -The Perks of Being a Wallflower (The book is bomb af. if yall havent tried, ur missing out) -The Kings of Summer -Never Let Me Go -The Art of Getting By -Silver Linings Playbook -Winter’s Bone -The Lovely Bones (The script. The words) -Me and Earl and the Dying Girl -American Horror Story -Black Swan

pps. remember that every one has their own pace and point of view. don’t push yourself too hard, and don’t overthink. give yourself time, and respect all your emotions. analyze them but not more than like 5 minutes as anything beyond that might cause you to overthink and be sadder. and sad is not rad. hehe. you got this. you got you. self love is the best even though it can be tricky to do. nobody else is like you. you’re the only one of you (i just remembered me.......... i might have hummed it while typing it mid sentence). consider other people’s opinion but do not let it cloud your own judgement as you know yourself best. dont let other comment’s define you. spread love. vibe people you vibe with. ayeeee lets go!!!

ppps this is my last post bc im happier now and know myself better. i no longer limit myself on the age that I want. I want to live as long as how God wants me to be. hehe.

x :D

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gamelpar · 4 years ago

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well shit had gone down even more

so by the recent updates on the situation that i read on reddit, more people have come out with their experience with ryan haywood. (these are my own opinions and thoughts on the situation, you are allowed to disagree with me, just respect that we all have different views, thoughts and opinions on all this, and that one opinion is not more wrong than another)

I’m not going to analyze every small detail or weigh the blame, but I still stand by that everyone involved chose to make the choices they made. both ryan and the girls could’ve done differently, they could’ve chosen differently. the girls were in a vulnerable place but that doesn’t diminish the fact that they knew he was married and had kids. it doesn’t diminish the fact that they were consensual with what were happening between him and them, or that they themselves did some wrongs too. and being only 17 means that you’re still old enough to understand and know what you’re doing and make your own decisions. ryan didn’t have any power over the girls and their decisions. the girls made their decisions on their own. the girls had power over themselves and made their decisions. However, whatever happened between them and ryan that wasn’t with their consent, they are not to blame for. But they’re not innocent in this, neither is ryan,

and ryan is no different. he’s 40 years old and that means that he is also old enough to understand and know what they’re doing and make his own decisions. ryan was married, had kids, had a job and was seen as a celebrity and a future image by many people. he knew that, and he still chose to do what he did. And what he did, he didn’t do by mistake, no, he chose to do. to take advantage of someone is a choice you make. cheating isn’t a mistake, it’s a choice. the choice to cheat can be seen as a mistake. ryan chose to cheat and that choice he made is a grave mistake that is going to be with him forever. and whatever he did together with the girls that was without their consent, that is all on him, not the girls. he had a whole lot to lose, and the fact that the girls knew what he had to lose and would lose if the truth ever came out from them, in a sense, it made the girls fell into silence about the whole thing. even if you’re a celebrity you’re not immune to reveal of your true colors.

And the choices that ryan made settles the fact that if he’s done it once, he can do it again. you don’t know what you’re capable of until you’ve actually done it, and ryan, and the girls, is capable of doing the same choices and decisions again. that is something that won’t ever disappear, and it’ll stick with them forever.

Ryan and the girls aren’t the victims. all of them made their wrongs. they made their choices, and the choices they made was mistakes that will never leave them. they can try to fix things, but this will forever be with them. the victims are the people that was hurt by this, and everyone, including ryan and the girls, will need the time it takes to recover from this, to get used to that what happened happen, and there’s nothing to do about it except taking the time they need to come to terms with it.

everyone has already suffered enough, and taking revenge on ryan or anyone else is just. fucking don’t. his coworkers and his family has already suffered enough. don’t be an ass and make it worse. you’re are allowed to be angry or sad, feel whatever emotion you feel, but revenge wont fix a shit, only result in hurting more people.

our mistake is putting too much faith in celebrities. they’re just as human as anyone, and they make bad choices and mistakes just like the rest of us. the only difference is that the celebrites have a lot of more people watching them, everyone knows who they are and the whole world will know the things they did and have their opinions about them.

we all need our time to deal with the shitstorm that seems to get worse by every day, and we’re allowed to take the time we need to.

i wont delete any posts ive made and reblogged about ryan, because 1. that a whole ton of posts, and 2. i made and reblogged all those posts when i cherished him for making me laugh and for being a seemingly good person in this world, and while his true colors was eventually shown and the good turned bad, it doesn’t exclude the fact that it was a good time and a good part to have known and letting have a place in my life. if i ever post or reblog posts of him that is before all this it will be a time until that happens, but i’ll still occasionally post and reblog about achievement hunter and its other members.

achievement hunter is still achievement hunter. ryan was just a member of it---a core member, yes---but he’s still just one member of several others. achievement hunter is so much more than that, and you’re allowed to still watch videos with him and laugh at him, and make fanfics and fanart or whatever with him in. you’re still allowed to cherish him as the person he was in videos and as who you thought he was. you’re still allowed to cherish his characters. just because it’s the end of ryan haywood’s time in achievement hunter, it doesn’t have to be the same for the vagabond and the mad king and any else of ryan’s characters. we have expanded on them so much that while the characters still may carry the same name and have similar traits and personalities, they’re still a whole another character and person, separate from the one they originated from, the real ryan haywood and who he is. I will though admit that it is hard for me, and several other people to fully separate the characters from the real man, especially considering that there never was a clear and straight line between what was character and what was the real person. Maybe after gotten to terms with all this after some much-needed time, i will be able to separate the characters and feel joy once again in reading fanfics about them and see fanarts of them, without thinking that what the real ryan haywood did goes the same for or is relevant to his characters, nor doesn’t define his characters to be capable of doing the same actions.

I don’t wish that what ryan did was never exposed just to not feel what i feel or feel the need to write this, because this whole thing has been horrible for me as it has for many others. I wish it had never happen, because ryan crossed the point of no return the moment he crossed the line of friendly conversation turning more intimate, especially with fans. even if it hadn’t been as serious as it is, like, just some one time thing that didn’t get too intimate, the damage would have already been done.

but wishes won’t change what have happened, and i’m just gonna have to get used to the changes, and move forward when i can and when i am ready to.

i’m not that much informed on what exactly adam kovic did, but it seems that whatever he did was wrong too, but i never was much into funhaus so i leave posts like this about him to others.

things will never be the same again, and that is something that me and everyone else will have to come to terms with.

but it doesn’t mean things won’t ever be good again.

#ryan haywood #Achievement Hunter #important #never planned on writing anything this long ever #but shitstorm got worse and i felt the need to express myself #more like weirdopath #rh situation

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horizon-verizon · 2 years ago

Note

I forgot to mention (Going Watsonian):

Book!Rhaenyra didn't appear to be an active strategist or even be willing to use it before her sons' deaths.

However, I don’t see this as a mark worth making against her or argue that she doesn’t deserve to rule, and that’s why the greens and Aegon the Elder would be "better". That she should have "given up".

ONE, there are no other candidates apart from Aegon (for Aemond to rule, Aegon has to die and Alicent would never allow that to happen). This is a monarchy, People do not "legally" or customarily rule by being "able"; the priority and defining factors are birth order and most times gender, but also the predecessor's choice.

TWO, Aegon was the worst option available aside from Aemond--Rhaenyra outpaces him in brains and morality. Her being "arrogant" and impulsive simply doesn't compare to Aegon's raping self. Plus, again, him going to fight on Sunfyre when it appears he doesn't even have the ability to fight, on or off Dragonback--he got beat twice, once by Rhaenys and the other time by teen Baela on the much smaller Moondancer--shows that we can argue that he shares Rhaenyra's "unwarriorness". And if we argue Rhaenyra should have gone to battle and say that she's "useless" to the point of her not being a real warrior, where do we see the evidence that Aegon the Elder was himself a "warrior"?!

These characters are thematic FOILS of each other!

THREE, in her world, there were and will be men who didn’t/won’t even reach the standard for a “good” ruler, and they did not get as much scrutiny or censure for not having a strategic mind, not being as conciliatory as some people want a monarch to be, or have the willingness to use and perform strategy. Or even have brains.

Examples:

Aenys I -- was way too people-pleasing and thought this was an acceptable kind of diplomacy, made too much room for Hightower demands, made his son heir instead of Rhaena, and married them without cracking down on Faith

Maegor I -- obvious: was a cruel and selfish man who nearly got himself killed in a duel and went too hard in the paint (though he went after the religion that I despise, he could have been smarter about it); worse than Henry VIII with women as he killed Alys Harroway's entire family not knowing Tyanna messed with Alys after he neglected Tyanna for not giving him children...meanwhile she served as his mistress of whispers

Baelor I -- religious narcissism bordering on madness (not caused by mental illness, again, just narcissism); should have married Daena or all of his sisters and given her/them power while he prayed; burned many Citadel books that are now lost; almost got himself killed in Dorne being recklessly pious instead of say, declaring to marry a Dornish person to one of his kids by his wife/wives if he bothered to be a king instead of a wanna-be saint

Aegon IV -- obvious: worse than Henry VIII concerning women/sister; abused his brother and sister; and caused the Blackfyre Rebellion

Dany's Brother, Viserys -- also obvious: cruel towards his sister, willing to sell people to aggrandize himself, didn't even have enough intelligence for diplomacy after selling said sister to avoid getting killed

Jaehaerys I (I have a whole post about it HERE)

Jaehaerys did some great good for Westeros, but:

he made female leadership more of a culturally unfavorable thing for his own ends, which diminished the perceived value of female leadership, and essentially minimized the pool of potential candidates for rulership. And it made more politically incompetent people exist. By not giving his daughters enough political training and education and confidence to rule, he made a precedent that also affected book!Rhaenyra. That, rather than her being inherently stupid, is a huge reason for her not being as great with strategy as she could have been. That and how Viserys also didn't give her substantive political training.

It was Septon Barth and Alysanne who made or set up a lot of the social policies credited to Jaehaerys' reign.

Pushed a sword through a young man's skull for sleeping with said daughter when he could be given the choice of exile like he did Jon Connington. Just to make an example out of him and, again, abuse Saera.

None of these men were 100% fit for the throne if we're going "who deserves the throne" or "for the realm" (as HotD loves to make the point instead of misogyny). Yet they do not get as much scrutiny or censure or marks against character during their reigns as much as Rhaenyra had in her very childhood. On the internet, you hear things like this:

Implying that Rhaenyra wanted to fuck Criston and even began to sexually proposition him....from the very beginning. They met when she was 7.

So 7 years olds with crushes can be sluts and invite sex now?

There are actually 2 versions or thoughts as to what happened for b/t Criston & Rhaenyra. A) [Septon Eustace] Criston approaches 14-15-year-old Rhaenyra, asking her to leave him & not marry Laenor (no sex or sexual approach from either), Rhaenyra rejects him citing his vows' celibacy significance, doubt of his being able to keep marriage/fidelity vows, & her house pride. B) [Mushroom] 14-15-year-old Rhaenyra goes to Criston in the Kingsguard tower and offers herself, he rejects her, and she leaves finding Harwin to sleep with.

So these people have fallen for Gyldayn's, Mushroom's, Septon Eustace's misogyny (and/or already believe that girls and women are inherently sexual devices for men no matter what age. And Eustace comes to really make shit up about Rhaenyra out of spite: bleeding on the throne somehow showing how the throne rejected her...meanwhile she was wearing armor).

When you try to go back and argue that Rhaenyra wasn't "right" or "fit" for the throne from her very childhood and leave the male brothers who managed to get the throne or accrue support easily...you show yourself to be a misogynist.

Comparison to Aegon II (Has Some Repetitions)

Especially when we are given so many details for how young book!Aegon the Elder has been a damn rapist, with his "fondling" of servant girls. I said it before, saying it again: those girls did not give consent and they most likely would not even if we tried to argue they did because they know there is too high of a risk to be sexually involved with a prince and maybe birth bastards.

While a lord's mistress (not a prince, just a nobleman) could and would be taken care of, it also depends on their rank, wealth, and how much real power they used and had. What if their relatives controlled their movements? Jaehaera was Aegon III's first wife and a full-"blooded" princess, yet she was definitely killed by Unwin Peake to make room for his own daughter.

Aegon IV was king. Whoever he slept with and took as his mistress was better protected"compensated"/provided for than a prince's mistress, and a prince's mistress could expect to be more protected, secure, and provided for than a lord's mistress. But, again, depends on the social circumstances. It's not like Aegon II's could-be mistress would be the same kind as Aegon IV's mistresses either, who enjoyed something close to real-world France's quasi-official position as "maitresse-en-titre". TBH, Melissa Blackwood is the best example of such a mistress, but she was noble, too. she had some sort of economic/social protections while being Aegon's mistress--he had to keep in mind her class.

And Aegon had no intent on making any woman he raped his official mistress. That 12-year-old merchant's daughter that Septon Eustace says was still a merchant's daughter, 12, and we never ever hear from her again, so we can be sure she was most likely a one-time, two-time thing.

No, Aegon's sexual proclivities and many sexual partners/Westerosi-ruled infidelity do not make him unfit enough for his fans and greens tans, yet Rhaenyra's crush and supposed pursuit of one man before marriage makes her unfit. She only slept w/2-3 men her whole life: Daemon, Harwin, and maybe Laenor.

Aegon "fondling" and raping servant girls =/= him just being sexually "promiscuous". The latter implies noncoercive, enthusiastic consent. No servant he fondles--and that 12-year-old girl Septon Eustace claims was his "paramour"--consented to his touch.

Some argue that Aegon the Elder/II was better off being the ruler for the sake of Westeros because he "at least" Aegon II was controlled or could be held back enough to let others rule without him being physically incapable.

But that is a joke and a lie:

Evidence A:

The delay did not sit well with the young king. Aegon II had run short of patience with his grandfather’s prevarications. Though his mother, the Dowager Queen Alicent, spoke up in Ser Otto’s defense, His Grace turned a deaf ear to her pleading. Summoning Ser Otto to the throne room, he tore the chain of office from his neck and tossed it to Ser Criston Cole. “My new Hand is a steel fist,” he boasted. “We are done with writing letters.” Ser Criston wasted no time in proving his mettle. “It is not for you to plead for support from your lords, like a beggar pleading for alms,” he told Aegon. “You are the lawful king of Westeros, and those who deny it are traitors. It is past time they learned the price of treason." ("The Red Dragon and the Gold")

Evidence B:

Yet Ser Otto was losing the trust of his king, who mistook his efforts for inaction, and his caution for cowardice. Septon Eustace tells us of one occasion when Aegon entered the Tower of the Hand and found Ser Otto writing another letter, whereupon he knocked the inkpot into his grandsire’s lap, declaring, “Thrones are won with swords, not quills. Spill blood, not ink.” ("The Red Dragon and the Gold")

Evidence C:

King Aegon also desired to avenge the murder of his heir by Blood and Cheese by means of an attack on Dragonstone, descending on the island citadel on dragonback to seize or slay his half-sister and her “bastard sons.” It took all of the green council to dissuade him. Ser Criston Cole urged a different course. The pretender princess had made use of stealth and treachery to kill Prince Jaehaerys, Cole said; let them do the same. “We will pay the princess back in her own bloody coin,” he told the king. The instrument the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard chose for the king’s vengeance was his Sworn Brother, Ser Arryk Cargyll.

Criston Cole's strategy may have gotten Rhaenys/Meleys off the board...but then it also spoke too much to Aegon's desire to kill, which got him grievously injured enough to not be able to rule. Again, Aegon's fault because he dismissed Otto and replaced him with Criston.

Evidence D:

Word of Rhaenyra’s coronation reached the Red Keep the next day, to the great displeasure of Aegon II. “My half-sister and my uncle are guilty of high treason,” the young king declared. “I want them attainted, I want them arrested, and I want them dead.” Cooler heads on the green council wished to parley. “The princess must be made to see that her cause is hopeless,” Grand Maester Orwyle said. “Brother should not war against sister. Send me to her, that we may talk and reach an amicable accord.”

Aegon would not hear of it. Septon Eustace tells us that His Grace accused the Grand Maester of disloyalty and spoke of having him thrown into a black cell “with your black friends.” But when the two queens—his mother, Queen Alicent, and his wife, Queen Helaena spoke in favor of Orwyle’s proposal, the truculent king gave way reluctantly. ("The Blacks and the Greens")

Evidence E:

Aegon II was two-and-twenty, quick to anger and slow to forgive. Rhaenyra’s refusal to accept his rule enraged him. “I offered her an honorable peace, and the whore spat in my face,” he declared. “What happens next is on her own head.” ("The Blacks and the Greens")

What happens after Otto and Alicent die, in the scenario where Aegon wins, is not injured, and gets to rule uncontested? Who stops him from being insane? Helaena? We don't know how much real influence she has over him, and:

why are we placing the obligation/burden of such a thing on his wife at all, when he's responsible for his own emotional control? Why should this be placed on the council people?

None of these people have any real power over him in the first place. He is King, past his majority of 16!

The text gives us clear examples of how stubborn and willful and temperamental he was. It'd only gets worse over the years, and with such a base as his raping, male, highborn entitlement....he'd not listen to anyone on most things, enough to ruin himself eventually and/or those closest to him AND Westeros itself!

Finally, some people argue that he had competent people around him to rule in his stead or control him.

While this maybe could be said for Alicent, here's why Alicent had her own faults in logic (especially with her "bastard blood shed in war" stupidity).

And Otto is the very guy who had Rhaenyra installed over Daemon in the first place, severely underestimating her mettle and a potential future Rhaenyra's confidence in her own right to rule.

And Helaena was excluded from actually performing politics. Holding your husband back from killing people and doing it only once or twice is not substantive or engaged politics like making policies or commanding armies or riding a dragon into war and taking castles as Aemond-Criston did (and Aemond didn't even take or occupy Harrenhal himself. Daemon left it behind to take KL with Rhaenyra and in Aemond's absence).

Meanwhile, the other council members were practically mute because Aegon AND Aemond wouldn't listen to sound protests!

Also, what about after Otto and Alicent died if the greens had won and Aegon was allowed to rule for longer than he had? Menace- totally unrestrained, a tyrant through and through since teendom. Unlike Rhaneyra, who became a tyrant through harassment, successive loss of children, betrayals, and socio-economic pressures built against her in a high-pressure situation from the greens stealing the treasury before she landed in KL.

Who do you prefer more Book! Rhaenyra or Show! Rhaenyra?

*EDITED*

Book!Rhaenyra, most definitely. This is a rant.

Though she is not good with strategy due to Viserys not giving her a proper political and military education like Jaehaerys I gave his sons, I prefer her because her being a "girly girl" from birth while pursuing her claim to the throne and never wavering from the belief that it is her birthright when the some of the court and Alicent have made it their business to remind her--most likely since she is the first female appointed heir--that her gender makes her less worthy of it gives me a thrill. It could have been tempting to give in at several moments throughout her life not long after Alicent birthed Aegon--again, Alicent and the greens plotted, harassed, disparaged ("safe from Criston Cole"), and thus also most likely made her feel unwelcome in her own home since Rhaenyra was 10. It takes a special persistence and resilience to be as sure as Rhaenyra was. Even if she did have private moments of doubt unrecorded, they never stopped her from her course or even made her pause (...until the betrayal of course. We all have limits, and again her childhood though Martin could have at least put in a few refusals against Celtigar's taxes and/or have put out one mid-successful strategy. How hard would it have been to clarify that it was her idea to send Daemon and Nettles out against Aemond or be the one to provide one element of the plan to take King's Landing?).

The determination to do as she thinks despite naysayers, while being as femme as she is great to see. And I don't mean that I think "soft femininity" will win the day or some Sansa bull, I mean that in patriarchal societies, the more femme-presenting a person of any gender is, the more they are taken as weak of heart or lacking in courage and strength.

And Doylstically, while GRRM made her much too vulnerable and w/o strategy or focus for much of the war (which is itself scented with sexist writing), again, that boldness and self-advocacy is what I like. She reminds me a lot of Cersei, but with comparatively more sense. I also think she was, for the most part, what alinahams says about her HERE.

Show!Rhaenyra, from her Milly/young self to her Emma/older self annoys me.

Show!Rhaenyra losing much of her fire in her adulthood and by episode 6 might seem expected or inevitable to some people because of the long fighting mostly spent alone, the guilt over Joffrey's death, and her need to look out for her sons in a hostile court, but I see it as a flaw in the writing and more sexist than the original story.

Aside from Rhaenyra already having left KL for Dragonstone after she marries, before she births Jaacaerys and ruing it for years alone before she marries Daemon, coming to befriend Laena, and having the chance to rule away from Alicent's presence, @xenonwitch points this out about Alicent:

the writers decided that a woman could only align with patriarchy if she had been brutally crushed beneath it and deprived or all agency. Hence Alicia becomes a doll for the men in her life to play with. This victimization also causes massive discontinuity during the scenes the writers decided to include actual text-based Alicent moments. The character they have set up is simply not designed to state the agency/ambition-based quotes that her book “counterpart” (term used loosely) showcases so easily.

I feel that something like this is also true for Rhaenyra in that the writers could not feel or imagine how/why a woman would fight for her throne on her own merit without the justification of an overhanging prophecy or her father's instructions, or with some awareness of some grand plan set down to define your entire existence to: to make sure that they create progeny who will fight in the Long Night. Both women suffer from the toothlessness of their fathers: Rhaenyra-Viserys, by what I say in the linked post above; Alicent-Otto, by the show making Alicent younger and unwilling to marry Viserys, only doing it by Otto's pressuring her, thus making both more victims than they are supposed to be.

Constant victimhood is not compelling, it's just trauma plot AND it's misogynist because it espouses that a woman can only hold power through suffering to uphold her male relatives' desires and that female power in any form is always given, not taken.

And when has the Dance or any event in the Westerosi monarchial/feudal history has it ever been about "the realm"? That goes for before the Targ Conquest as well--can we actually sit back and assume that any of these people are ever acting for the smallfolk (Alicent against Dyana, the bursting through the floor who Hess called "civilians", Otto not thinking about smallfolk when he pressured Alicent into bonding w/Viserys, etc)? So who is the "realm'? The only ones left to count as "the realm" are rich traders, merchants, and nobles. These are people that Alicent and Viserys tell each other, themselves and Rhaenyra needs protecting?! No, this is a narrative excuse for the prophecy to be the only real indicator for the "good" people vs the "bad" people. The "good" ones are Rhaenyra, Alicent, Rhaenys, & Viserys--those who think of the "realm", while the "bad" are Otto, Daemon, etc. are those who think selfishly--such a reductive thing to do! It became less about Rhaenyra-the-person, and more Rhaenyra-the-device of every male in existence and in her lineage for the sake of the known prophecy.

And to make Alicent more...central or impressive, they took some of Rhaenyra's properties or moments and gave them to Alicent. For example, the show took away her moment of self-advocacy when they gave it to Alicent in episode 5, the reveal of the green dress. Probably b/c they so stripped Alicent down to a helpless goody-two-shoes that they had to give her something some people would sympathize with her for, or think she's heroic. Just to make her more interesting. At the expense of Rhaenyra's characterization, though. And the result is that we also can't really imagine show!Rhaenyra calling for Vaemond's head (she may have or have not made eyes at Daemon, but she still bothered to try and defend herself to the greens when before in the book she took matters into her own hands concerning the Driftmark claim. Viserys didn't have to make a long walk to defend her) OR feeding his corpse to Syrax OR saying "they stole my crown" or "they killed my daughter". this Rhaenyra is nearly unrecognizable...you know why? Because she has become a mere protesting tool.

That isn't at all what ASoIaF--with all its gray, well-developed characters--is about. I fell for ASoIaF because it depicted characters trying to find control and a stronger, more autonomous sense of identity in a world that wishes to deny them these and they often find the building blocks. Book!Rhaenyra found strength by recognizing herself as at least part of a great house, similar to what Dany does. In contrast to people like Jon, Tyrion, Arya, who all suffer struggle from their "ancestry not giving them enough solace" to create stabler and healthier identities:

I don't like how the show has made this story about what's good for the "realm" because it detracts from what this story has always been about and its connection to Daenerys and the Big Five. It's not just about fighting for the Long Night, it's also developing personhood through living conflicts between love vs duty vs power.

@mononijikayu states with Alicent:

i also have to mention that many people said that the story was not feminist enough when the literal title of the origin was princess and the queen, focusing on the two powerful women who held the reins of power - one fighting for her right to the throne and her house and the other wanting to establish a legacy of her own by using her own children. it wasn't an just an archetypal stepmother story, thats just one part of the vindictiveness that runs along the story. it was two women challenging the status quo in their own way, creating a sense of agency in the damn patriarchal society. people like to apply so much of the modern peripheral on medieval society but look away when the main lead were women trying to decide for themselves what their lives should look like.

This part is especially true: "the main lead were women trying to decide for themselves what their lives should look like." This is what both book!Alicent and Rhaenyra were, women who both were trying to create a future for themselves where they'd benefit, trying to engineer their own lives by their own means and claims to resources, by their own will.

No, because a girl or a woman couldn't possibly try to flout patriarchal mores or try to decide her own fate if she truly is as "girly", feudal woman/girl (think Lucrezia Borgia from 2011 The Borgias) as canon states Rhaenyra to be. We have to have a modern, 2000s, "independent" young girl placed in a feudal world to suffer its inequities while blatantly ignoring practically every single rule....only to basically give up entirely and not fight for the birthright because....of a page that her treacherous former friend gives her...and ignore the risk to lives and dignities of not only her sons but herself, her husband, her sworn lords, and every other black faction member?

Therefore, it's also the stark dichotomy of her young vs older selves that is justified, by the show's writing, that Rhaenyra is less self-confident or willign to fight back. That she didn't fight with Alicent through innuendos, slight jabs, references of suspicions, or even hint that she thinks that Alicent is after her and her throne. Where's the clever verbal sparring? (This doesn't appear in the book, but esp with Rhaenyra having had her red/black dress moment, do we really think that she would have taken comments like "who protects the princess from Criston Cole" down lightly, as we should know Alicent definitely would have kept making such comments up until Rhaenyra left for Dragonstone and whenever she came back to KL?)

Now just because you get older, doesn't mean you lose a temper or that anger doesn't fill you up when you feel slighted if you are the type of person Rhaenyra in the book was. Remember, her canon characterization was that she could be charming but "never forgot a slight".

Rant over.

#rhaenyra targaryen #fire and blood characters #Fire and Blood #asoiaf #fandom misogyny #asoiaf fandom #hotd fandom #fandom commentary #fandom critical #aegon ii #aemond targaryen #aemond's characterization #aegon ii's characterization #rhaenyra's characterization

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motleymoose · 4 years ago

Text

Homecoming Pt. 3: Bits & Pieces Ch. 1

Chapter 1 Ashes in a Vacuum

Fandom: The Mandalorian, Star Wars Characters: The Mandalorain (Din Djarin), Gender Neutral Reader, The Child Words: 2.5k+ Warnings: Injury, Angst, A whole lotta attitude

Summary:

I AM ALL SORTS OF ANGRY AT THAT FRAGGING BUCKETHEAD!!! He's leaving me with more questions than I have the ability to ask, and I don't like it one bit.

But dang, that little greenie is cute!

Notes:

Heya! Thank y'all for reading!!! I'm not sure how many chapters this part is gonna have, so??? We're coming up on the halfway point of the story. Maybe my editing skills will improve by then (ha).

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Homecoming Masterlist

The way everything hurt, I was sure I was dying.

Squinting at the dim, fuzzy gray light of my bunk, I ran an internal diagnostics check. With every little wiggle and flex of an appendage, I gradually realized that I was not, in fact, dying, but I wasn’t in prime fighting shape either. Slowly, gingerly, I scrubbed sleep from my burning eyes with the heels of my palms, my vision spotty and fuzzy in places. It felt good to let them linger, pressing heavily into the closed eyelids and relieving the pressure built up behind my eyeballs. As killer headaches went, the one I was experiencing in that moment wasn’t the worst I’d ever had, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like doshing kung.

Now that I was sorta awake, I took physical stock of my body. My eyes still wouldn’t clear, the large flecks of gray shadow swimming lazily in my periphery, so I used touch to see what was going on. Letting my hands do the work, I started with my head, running my fingers lightly down my neck to my shoulders and chest. Something felt off about the shape of my body as I continued to scan downwards to my hips. Foggy memories swirled inside my head, screaming and pain and choking smoke. A jumbled mess of noise and smells overpowered everything else, and the bits and pieces of the fight and flight from Bosph scattered nervously into the darker recesses of my brain.

Frustrated, I sat up, ignoring the sharp tug at the pit of my elbow and the violent, painful thumping rattling my brain. “Fragging buckethead,” I hissed through clenched teeth. He had got me in this mess. Sure, it was my fault for getting a bounty put on me, but if only he’d listened to me in the first place, we coulda avoided Bosph entirely. The anger, bitter and sparkling and pulsing red, numbed the headache and the bruises slightly. And as the ire rose, so too did the functionality of my brain.

I could focus now on what my hands had been trying to tell me: all of my possessions, from my boots to my jumpsuit and everything in between or tucked into pockets, was gone. A worn coarseweave tunic hung from my curved shoulders, the sleeves neatly rolled up around my biceps, and a newer looking pair of long johns, the baggy legs bunched around my knees, had replaced my utilitarian and well-loved apparel.

Oh Mother of Kwath! Had the Mandalorian undressed me?! I mean, I was an adult. He was an adult. And apparently I had been injured enough to warrant such an invasion of privacy. Still, I couldn’t fight the blush burning brightly across my chest and face.

So doshing uncomfortable.

Nope, nope, nope. Didn’t want to think about it anymore.

Pushing down all of the humiliation and trauma and apprehension until the feelings were little more than an annoying itch under my skin, I allowed the rage to take over a little more. It was easier to be angry than to feel anything else, the outrage a warming presence in my chilly body. It also gave me the little boost of courage for what I had to do next.

Screwing my eyes shut, incredibly unprepared for the worst possible outcome, I touched the place under my collarbone where my silver skull pendant rested, a solid, reassuring weight...

Nothing.

Instead of skin-warmed metal, I was met with warm, padded resistance. Peering into the neck of the tunic, I found a thick, dull-colored wrap encasing my midsection from under my armpits to my hip bones. It smelled of the sea on a warm summer’s day, and I wrinkled my nose automatically. Bacta. Whatever injury I had sustained must’ve been bad enough to call for the precious, oftentimes expensive goo. The wrap wasn’t so tight as to constrict breathing or some movements, but it wasn’t exactly comfortable either.

The physical uncomfortableness brought me back to the question of why the bounty hunter was keeping me alive, but just like all the other feelings, I ignored it. I needed to find my clothes, my necklace. Get dressed. Leave this beautiful ship and her tyrant pilot behind and become a krill farmer out on the Outer Rim.

Well, probably not a farmer. A droid mech, perhaps.

The soft skin on the inside of my elbow twinged again, pulling me out of my daydreams as I reached for the blanket covering the lower half of my body. A thin, clear tube snaked from a needle inserted into a vein to a nearly-empty pouch hanging from a hook in the bunk wall. Fumbling, my fingernails worked their way underneath the sticky medical tape, peeling up an edge wide enough to pinch. I ripped the tape from my arm, gritting as it pulled hair and skin with it. Once the tape was gone, I slid the needle out of my arm with a hiss, tossing it aside to leak between the cot and the bunk wall. Whatever cocktail of drugs the bounty hunter had mixed into the IV, he’d probably added a good dose of sedative to keep me down for the count. That would’ve explained the fogginess.

And it made me so mad.

I let the full-blown, all-consuming fury in, jerking the coarseweave blanket off of me and freeing my legs. Exhaling forcefully, I tested my injured knee, poking at the matching bacta bandage. The original searing-white agony I had experienced on Bosph was muted now, less of a screaming torment and more of a dull throbbing. Healed enough to put weight on. Hopefully

Groaning and cursing at stiff muscles and bucketheaded hunters respectively, I wriggled on the bed until my bare feet skimmed the floor. The cold steel of the hull platform sent shivers through my flesh, feeding the annoyance and anger and frustration. I inhaled, steadying myself for the shooting pain sure to follow standing on both legs. Pleasantly astonished as I was that it didn’t hurt too horribly, I wasn’t prepared for the lightheadedness. The blood rushed from my face, my vision blackening around the edges.

“Oh frag,” I managed to croak before slumping to the floor in an unconscious heap. --------------- I awoke, some time later, inside my bunk. The coarseweave blanket was tucked firmly beneath my chin, the IV reinserted into my arm, and my red-hot rage completely dissipated. An imposing, blurry figure stood at the foot of the bunk, and I took my time adjusting myself from lying flat to reclining, eyes tightly shut to avoid the spinning shadows. Once I was comfortable, I cracked an eyelid. The Mandalorian’s blurred steely stare greeted me, a clear bag of liquid over one arm and a sling supporting the other.

“You’re awake,” he stated matter of factly.

“D-Didn’t want to give you the satisfaction of travelling in silence,” I replied dryly, voice husky with disuse. “By the way, where’s my jumpsuit?” I opened my eyes all the way, blinking rapidly to dispel the fog coating them. It didn’t work.

The bounty hunter harrumphed softly. “Incinerated. You had a fractured knee, two broken ribs and a blaster wound to the stomach. Plus severe retinal damage and dehydration. You’re lucky you even made it off-planet.” He angled his visor away from me to tap out something on his vembrace.

“Wait, what?”

He tilted his visor towards me and put it simply. “You almost died.”

I feebly waved the non-IVed hand in front of my face. “No, not that. Did you say you incinerated all of my stuff?!”

Ignoring me, per his style, he continued to tap on his vembrace’s control panel.

Devastated, depressed and not a little bit murderous, I glowered squintily at him. I was reeling inwardly, but on the outside I was colder than carbonite.

As he ignored me, I studied him as closely as my recovering vision would allow. I could tell there was something different in his appearance, but it took a moment for me to recognize what it was . A softer quality to his edges that I couldn’t quite understand, his body looking less defined, less bulky than normal. I blinked several times to refocus, and was rewarded with infinitesimally better vision.

“Where’s your armor, shabuir?” I sniped. I may have been more than a little miffed that all of my worldly possessions were now ash and lumps of twisted metal, and biting at a Mandalorian was a temporarily soothing balm to my aching heart.

The hunter reached over me and unhooked the empty bacta IV bag from a rod above my head, replacing it with the one he’d brought. Adjusting the solution valve, he tapped the drip chamber twice before turning his attention back to me. “There’s a spare jumpsuit in the ‘fresher. Keep the bacta wrap on for another hour, at least.” As an afterthought, he added, “We’ll be on Nevarro in a few days.” A frown tainted his voice. “Stay out of my way ‘til then.” Spinning on his heel, he marched to the ladder and disappeared onto the upper deck.

………

It took about twelve hours for me to feel well enough to rid myself of the IV and bacta wraps and get out of the bunk without having the ship buck underneath me like a wild bluurg. I took that time to cry myself to sleep, wake up and cry some more. The loss of my tools and kit was a huge blow to my self-worth, but the loss of the pendant, well. It was the only piece I had left of a life full of fear and hunger and love; it connected me to home. If I didn’t have that, where did I belong?

It took another three hours for me to get up the nerve to get cleaned and dressed. I prowled around the cargo hold, poking and prodding at the carbonite storage, the control panels and the refresher. There hadn’t been much of a chance on my earlier voyages to explore, so with the Mandalorian occupied guiding the ship through hyperspace, I felt emboldened to figure out more about him. Not that there was much to glean from my investigation; the hold contained only the basics of survival for deep space travel, and weapons. Lots of weapons.

Oh, and several beings in what looked to be forced-stasis, frozen in carbonite.

Shivering in sympathy for my hold companions, I turned and shuffled back to the bunk. What I really had hoped to find was the incinerator - most ships kept them below near the back for easy dispatch of trash - but I hadn’t found hide nor hair of one below deck. It could’ve been located above. Not exactly the safest or most pleasant location, yet with all the fire power and carbonite in the hold, it kinda made sense. No need to put three dangerous elements all in one place, if you had the room.

A little voice at the back of my head reminded me of something else: that fragging Mando had all but ordered me to stay put. If he thought for one second that I was going to listen to him, he had another thing coming. I held no ill-will against Mandalorians in general, but this one was getting on my bad side. First arresting me and then almost getting me killed and then destroying the only thing I had left of home reminded me that I only had myself to rely on, that everyone else was out to either disappoint me or kill me.

I’d be doshed if I was going to let that buckethead dictate what I could and couldn’t do, especially since he was the one who took me off that Maker-forsaken moon in the first place.

Especially since he handed me over to Mihcas without an apology.

And took my pendant and tools to boot.

Ascending the ladder turned out to be a formidable feat in my weakened condition, but I prevailed. It took more effort than it should have, and I collapsed onto the cool steel platform once I made it all the way up.

“What are you doing?” The modulated baritone came from my right. Swiveling my head, I watched as the bounty hunter stomped out of the captain’s quarters, a bundle of clothes clutched to his chest and fingers unsurprisingly reaching for his blaster. Whatever was in the bundle must have been precious, for he shifted it away from me to his injured arm. It obviously still hurt; he held the bundle in the crook of his elbow, awkwardly bent and trembling with effort.

Good.

Rage flared in my chest, licking its way up like flames and leaving a red mask pounding behind my eyes. Pushing the anger away, I clambered up to my feet. I was going to get answers, and I’d be fragged if I was going to show emotion in front of him.

“Where’s the incinerator?” I spat savagely. So much for not showing any emotion.

Obviously taken aback by my vehemence and bluntness, he cocked his helmet and pulled his hand from his blaster, resting it casually on his belt buckle. “Why?”

Simple enough question, simple enough answer. But I didn’t feel like answering him. Opening my mouth to respond, a cooing sound interrupted me. It sounded like it was coming from the bundle still shielded in his injured arm.

Snapping my jaw shut with a painfully audible click, I raised my eyebrows pointedly at him. “Trafficking something illegal there, chakaar?” Anxiety clenched my stomach in its viselike grip, and I had to force the bile from rising in my throat. I was still weak from Bosph, but if he was buying and selling living beings to make a living, he was no better than my ex-boss. No better than me. Which meant I was going to have to hurt him or die trying.

A sharp hiss of an inhale through the vocoder told me I’d hit on something. Something he didn’t want me knowing. A whispery stream of very impolite Mando��a floated in the space between us. The air was thick with tension, and both of us were patiently waiting for the other to make the next move.

The coo came again, slightly muffled, followed by a bubbly giggle, startling us out of our stare-down. The bundle wriggled, and the Mandalorian shifted his attention from me to it as the thing became too much to handle with one injured arm. Grunting either out of pain or frustration, the bounty hunter stepped backwards until he was in the doorway of the bunk. Squeaking and chittering indignantly, the lump in the clothes broke free with a victorious huff.

And it was the cutest fragging thing I’d ever laid my eyes on.

_____________________

Notes:

chakaar - corpse robber, thief, petty criminal - general term of abuse shabuir - extreme insult - *jerk*, but much stronger

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deadbiwrites · 5 years ago

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PROMPTS!! I want a pumpkin picking date with Kara pouting a lot bec Lena said they can’t just casually take the 800lbs pumpkin home. Bonus points if Lena caves and ends up paying some guy enough money to buy it and supergirl flies it back to their apartment to carve it. Maybe it can’t fit through the door?? I’m not sure.

(Oh my WORD, it took forever and a day to get this to post but I did it, dammit! @valkyrieskwad , this one's for you! Cross-posting it on Ao3!!)

"You want to what?"

Kara grins and bounces in place, totally unperturbed by Lena's decided lack of enthusiasm. "Pumpkin picking! There's a patch, like, an hour away. It's so cute, I follow them on Instagram, and everyone looks like they're having so much fun in the pictures! It's almost Halloween, too, so we need to go soon or all the good ones will be gone."

"The good ones…?"

"Pumpkins, Lena! Pumpkins! C'mon, please?"

"Isn't this exactly the sort of thing Alex makes fun of people for? Being basic?"

"Alex doesn't know what fun is if there aren't guns involved, so who cares? Please, babe? Be basic with me!"

Lena arches a brow at her, already caving under the weight of her girlfriend's boundless enthusiasm and the rare (and doubtlessly strategic) use of 'babe'. "Is it a muddy field?" she asks suspiciously.

"Uh… wear boots?" Kara tries, still smiling. "We can take the baby. He'd love it, and we need to work on socializing him, right?"

Lena turns her attention to the little white puppy snoozing on her lap, running a hand over his back absently. "I mean, yes, we do, but a farm?"

Kara's affronted, or at least playing at it. "Uh, I halfway grew up on a farm, thank you."

"And look what's happened because of it."

Kara laughs, shaking her head, somehow charmed even though Lena knows that she's being a brat about this whole thing. "Why do you hate pumpkin picking?"

"I don't like doing things unless I'm already good at them."

Kara scoffs at this. "You can't be bad at picking pumpkins, Lena. It's just like when you were a kid."

The long stretch of silence at this is telling.

"Lena," Kara says slowly, "have- have you ever been to a pumpkin patch?"

"I buy pumpkin at the store in a can, like a regular person. Half the work, half the price."

"But you can't carve a can of pumpkin puree!"

More silence. Krypto wakes up, shakes his whole roly-poly little body, and lays back down for another nap, snuffling as Lena rubs between his ears.

"Lena. Please tell me you've carved a pumpkin."

"I- I've seen people do it, so-"

"Oh my GOD."

"Kara-"

"What- what did you do at Halloween? No pumpkins! That's like half the fun, aside from all the candy and costumes, and…" Horror spreads across her face almost as fast as a creeping red flush spreads over Lena's. "Honey. Sweetie. Baby. Please, please tell me that your childhood included just one iteration of a normal American Halloween…?"

"Define normal..."

Kara jumps up from the couch, fuming. "I'm gonna punch your mom in the boob. Is it Tuesday? They do visits at the prison on Tuesdays, right? Because, like, I know she's in prison, repaying her debt to society, or whatever, but I'm still gonna go punch her in the boob."

Lena grabs Kara's hand, tugging her to a halt. "Alright, first of all, I appreciate and share the sentiment. Second, please never put your hands anywhere near my mother's boobs. Third, we're gonna stop talking about my mother's boobs, forever. Starting now."

"That's just… why does she suck so bad. Like, so, so badly, she sucks as a person. So bad. Badly sucks."

"Okay, yeah, you're doing that thing where you're so mad you make word puzzles, so I need you to sit down and hold this puppy." Lena lifts Krypto (who growls his fiercest growl and bites her fingers for disrupting his 18th nap of the day) and pushes him into Kara's arms, gratified when she instantly melts, just a little. "Better?"

"Yeah." She heaves a sigh and drops onto the couch beside Lena once more. "Look, if you really don't want to, we don't have to. But it is fun, and it is a disgustingly cute couple-y thing to do, which I know you love even if you pretend you don't."

Lena scoffs. "Prove it."

"You drag me into every photobooth you see and have a collection of all the photos in your desk at work."

Lena flushes a little more, knowing that she's been caught. "It's fun?" she asks quietly, spinning her chunky silver ring around and around on her finger.

"So fun. And it's a good excuse to get out of the city for the day." Kara scoots close, tipping her head so it knocks lightly against Lena's. "Instead of beating up your mom, what if we just make sure you get to do all the stuff you missed, like pumpkin patches and carving Jack-o-lanterns, and all that jazz?"

Lena considers this. "So, we're doing this at least partly to spite my mother?"

Kara beams at her. "Yep! You're gonna get all muddy doing something frivolous just because it's fun. She'd hate it."

"When are we going?"

It's a few days later that they're piled into a borrowed pick-up truck and coasting out of the city in the early morning. Lena has relented the wheel, for once, conceding that she hates driving outside the city and she has no idea where they're going. At least Kara was right about one thing- Krypto is already having a blast, trying his best to stick his entire upper body out the window, and yipping in annoyance when Lena continuously pulls him back into the cab.

One benefit, though, is Kara in what she calls her 'farm clothes', a heretofore undiscovered genre that involves a sturdy and well-loved pair of leather boots, what is clearly a men's flannel shirt tucked into a pair of faded jeans secured with a heavy leather belt, and a goddamn trucker hat.

Lena's really annoyed at how much this look is working for Kara.

Totally annoyed. No other emotion. Or like, squirmy feelings about it in general.

None at all.

"... and of course we'll get some breakfast- hot cider and doughnuts sound good to you?"

Lena blinks, realizes that Kara's been chattering this whole time. "What was that?"

"I asked how you feel about getting some breakfast. You okay? You're kinda spacey today."

"Says the girl from space," Lena snarks.

Kara rolls her eyes, amused. "That joke was only funny the first hundred times."

"Still makes me laugh."

"Fine, fine. But you're good? 'Cause I can hear you thinking, over there."

"I'm good, I just… is it stupid that I'm nervous?"

Kara takes her hand and gives it a squeeze. "Not at all. But you don't need to be nervous or anxious, because it's fun. Okay?"

Lena nods. "Okay." She shifts a bit on the old-school bench seat in the truck. "Why did we borrow this thing, again? My cars are a lot more comfortable."

"Well, Frank would yell at me if I got mud all over one of your cars."

Lena snorts. "He would not, he loves you."

"And, this way, we can get a big one." There's an almost manic gleam in Kara's eyes that's distinctly disturbing.

Lena chooses not to ask questions.

It is not a muddy field.

The dirt road they pull onto doesn't look all that promising at first, but the pumpkin patch itself is pretty, in a rustic, outdoorsy sort of way. Even early in the day there's a decent crowd here, and Kara grins at the sight of the picturesque red barn a ways away cheerfully advertising cider and doughnuts inside. "Nice! I hoped they'd still be doing the cider and stuff!" She hops out of the truck and rounds the front to help Lena down- whoever this behemoth belongs to had installed a lift-kit to it, and it's a fair few feet to the ground.

"I thought this was a pumpkin patch?"

"Well, yeah, but there's an orchard next door or something, so they have apples and pumpkins. And pears, apparently. Ha! A-PEAR-ently! I'm funny," Kara cackles, settling her hands on Lena's hips.

"You're lucky you're so cute," Lena snorts and scoops Krypto up, bracing a hand on Kara's shoulder as she's lifted easily out of the truck and onto the ground. "But you being able to just pick me up like that? Always a turn-on."

Kara laughs, loud and surprised as a flush creeps up her neck. "Good to know."

Lena smirks and sets Krypto onto the ground, and their day begins.

"So," Lena drawls, chewing an admittedly delicious cinnamon cider doughnut, "what constitutes a good pumpkin?"

"Well, obviously, you don't want a squishy one."

"Obviously."

"Tiny ones are cute, but it's really hard to carve them."

"Noted."

"Other than that, it's all personal preference. I say go big or go home, Alex likes the really round ones, Eliza likes hers to be smooth, and Jeremiah loved ugly pumpkins."

"Ugly pumpkins...?"

"Oh, yeah, like, the weirder and bumpier the better. He was really good at carving them, so he could do, like, super cool faces and stuff. He made a witch one time that was really creepy."

Lena pushes up onto her toes to plant a kiss on Kara's cheek. "He sounds like a fun dad."

Kara smiles a little sadly. "He was."

Sensing a rapid downshift in mood, Lena resolves to perk the fuck up. "So! We did doughnuts for breakfast- which I strongly suspect was your real motivation for this little venture…"

Kara's mouth drops open in shock, but her eyes are sparkling with humor. "I would never!"

"Sure. So, as long as the pumpkin isn't soft, it's fair game?"

"Yup! Go nuts! I couldn't get a pumpkin last year, because of that guy from Yavin IV, I'm gonna get a big one this year to make up for it."

Lena fixes her with a look. "Not too big, though, right?"

Kara smiles innocently, letting Krypto tug her a pace or two ahead. "Of course not."

Lena sighs.

Kara really is a terrible liar.

"Lena."

Upon seeing what's caught her attention, Lena nearly drops her own perfectly round pumpkin. "No. Under no circumstances are we getting that one."

Kara's starry-eyed as she stares up at the truly gargantuan squash before her. "It's beautiful."

Lena strongly disagrees- this pumpkin is decidedly ugly, misshapen and lumpy and a shade that's not quite orange or green, but a rather sickly combination of both.

But what it lacks in general aesthetic appeal, it more than makes up for in sheer size. It's wider than Lena is tall, likely taller than she is, too, and is, in general, what Winn would call 'a threateningly large vegetable'. It's on a little platform, a plaque proudly boasting that it'd won some award or other at the state fair a week or so ago. And also its weight:

One thousand two hundred eighteen pounds.

Lena tries for reason. "Kara. Darling. Love of my life. This… thing won a prize. They bred it especially to be giant. There is absolutely no way they're going to sell it to two city-slickers."

And then it happens. After almost a year of dating, and several years of friendship, Lena is well aware of Kara's pout, and especially aware of her own susceptibility to it. She can almost sense when it's about to happen, these days, and she senses it coming now, tries to steal herself against it.

But it's no use. Kara, she could maybe handle. Maybe. But when she bends and scoops up their three-month old puppy to help her pout, Lena is powerless against the assault.

"Alright, that was unnecessary," she complains. "No using our son like that. He doesn't even know why he's pouting."

"But is it working?" Kara asks, hiding her face behind Krypto's and talking in the goofy voice she reserves for narrating his thoughts.

Lena groans, because yes, of course it's fucking working. "No. Kara, they worked hard to make that... gourd. Can't you get another one?"

"I mean, I can," she agrees, peeking over Krypto's head so just her eyes show. "But think about how awesome that's gonna look when I carve it."

Lena sighs. "Kara, they're using it as a draw to get people to come here."

"They're making it like a display in a zoo. People just come and point at it! We can give it a loving home!"

Lena arches a brow. "You literally just said that you want to cut it open, scoop out its insides, and carve it.."

"Well, yeah, but like, lovingly."

Lena snorts, knowing she's lost. "Fine! Fine, we can go ask."

Kara cheers, hopping a bit in excitement and darting forward to press her lips to Lena's in a silly, smiley kiss.

As predicted, the farmer is initially reluctant to sell his prize pumpkin. "It's not the money," he clarifies hastily when Lena doubles her offer for the damn stupid pumpkin. "I need the seeds, to plant next year. I won big at the fair this year, and with those I'd have a hell of an advantage next season. You understand?"

"What if we save the seeds and bring them to you?" Kara offers earnestly. "I can drive them out whenever."

The farmer looks skeptical at this, but Kara's offer doesn't waver under his glare, and he sighs, reaching out to shake Lena's hand and seal the deal. "Fine. Only because your girl is cute."

Lena huffs out a laugh, and Kara positively beams at him. "Thanks so much!"

"But Jake has the tractor out in the maze right now, won't be back for an hour or so to move it for ya."

Kara's grin only widens. "Don't worry, I called a friend for help moving it."

The farmer shrugs, and Lena groans, knowing that one spectacle at the pumpkin patch is about to be replaced by another.

Lena hands the farmer his due for his prize pumpkin, and he turns away before she calls out, catching his attention.

"Sorry, I almost forgot, how much for this one?"

He eyes the normal-sized, perfect pumpkin in Lena's arms and his mouth quirks up in a grin. "For you? On the house."

Supergirl makes a very showy entrance, to the delight of most in attendance (the exceptions being a 74-year old man who thinks anyone who flies should have to get a license, and her girlfriend who is rolling her eyes fondly and wrestling to keep their puppy from revealing her secret identity), landing with a flourish. She smiles brightly at the crowd waving and laughing, high-fiving anyone who offers before shouldering the massive gourd. "Sorry, guys, I'm on a very important mission. Support local farms!"

Lena snorts, loudly, and Supergirl takes off into the air as her ears turn a little pink.

The farmer sidles up to Lena at the back of the crowd, looking a little star-struck. "Wow."

Lena grins, dropping a kiss to Krypto's nose and blowing in his face when he nips at her chin. "Yeah," she agrees. "Wow about sums it up."

The truck rides notably lower on the trip back, the massive pumpkin weighing down the truck bed probably more than is entirely safe.

"So, how was your first trip to the pumpkin patch?" Kara asks with a grin.

"I hated it," Lena deadpans, cradling Krypto in one arm and her pumpkin in the other. On the seat between them are three dozen doughnuts, four gallons of cider, and three bottles of hard cider the farmer's wife had slipped into their bags with a wink.

Overall, it's been a very pleasant experience.

"Oh yeah?"

"Absolutely awful. Hated everything."

"What was the worst part?"

Lena reaches over, grabbing Kara's hand and threading their fingers together. "Spending it with you."

Kara clicks her tongue, shakes her head. "Yeah, that sounds awful. I'm a pain in the butt."

"Yeah. You're kinda cute, though, so I guess it's fine."

Kara chuckles, brings their clasped hands to her mouth and kisses Lena's knuckles. "Good news for me."

Lena smiles, turning her attention back to the window and watching as fields fairly fly by, the low sound of Kara singing in the background making this almost unbearably perfect.

Almost.

"Um… so, funny story…"

Lena arches a brow expectantly, and Kara scuffs her red boots on the floor. "Oh?"

"Yeah. So, the thing is, I tried everything, with the pumpkin, and… it won't fit through the door. None of the doors. Or any of the windows…"

Lena bonds at the waist and laughs until she cries.

That year starts a long-running and much beloved tradition, wherein a truly massive and skillfully-carved pumpkin appears in L-Corp's opulent lobby the first weekend of every October. It later years, it's joined by other, smaller ones, dozens, carved by the children of employees, including those of the CEO herself.

It's a family tradition, after all.

#ask me #supercorp #i geeked so hard when I saw this was from one of my very favorite writers #full-on squeaked #prompts!

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idrawstuffidk · 5 years ago

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My name is Lauren Cookson, that’s the best way I can think to start this story, though there are probably… better ways. I have to write this, it has to be written, recorded somehow. I’m scared, not for my life per-say, but… about something else. This is something I just can’t explain… I’ll just start from the beginning.

My best friends name was Lucy Miller, and she’s not around anymore. I don’t know if she’s dead, but she is a missing person. Her brother, Landon, is probably not better off. We know where he is but… he’s definately not going to be around much longer. That’s not the point right now though, I’m sorry, There’s so much I need to say.

Lucy and Landon were pretty big bullies, they really hated this one girl, or person? I actually am not sure what they identified as, they seemed fine with people calling them a ‘she’ but I think I heard from Lucy that they were almost kicked out of their house for being non-binary, so I guess I’ll stick with that. Better to not disrespect someone who might be dead. Anyway, their name was Giselle Winslette. They only had one friend, this really athletic girl named Alyssa. Alyssa always protected them from Lucy and Landon, and I guess also from me. I never tried to hurt them, but Alyssa really disliked me, which I guess was, well, reasonable.

Giselle came to school a lot with bruises, looking like they hadn’t slept. They’d leave school looking worse after Lucy and Landons abuse, and the cycle kept repeating. More than once I’d overhear Alyssa talking to them, telling them that they couldn’t let their mother treat them the way she was. I don’t know what happened, all I know is that that woman clearly was not a good woman.

It wasn’t until near the end of the year that it got really dark. Really… scary. We were just let out of school and Alyssa was shot. I don’t remember where or who shot her, I didn’t look at her, I just dropped at the sound of the gunshot, I didn’t find out until later that it was Alyssa. It wasn’t until after that that Giselle went missing. Her parents were found dead in her house. According to police reports, Giselle’s fingerprints were found on the murder weapon, though they didn’t say what was used.

No one knows where they are, a lot of people think they commit suicide but I don’t beleive it, because I think I’ve seen them. I don’t know if it’s really them, they’re hair is shorter and they’re wearing a different outfit since Ive last seen them. I’m not sure if it really is them, they just stand beyond the fence at my school, they watch us, and no one seems to know if it is or isn’t them. Though most think it isn’t. I beleive it is them. I really do. Dang, I’m rambling, aren’t I?

Lucy recently went missing after trying to talk to the person, shouting out that they’re a creep. They didn’t even get to go back to class. I looked away for a minute, and when I looked back Lucy was gone. Landon moved to live with his uncle, who is a cop. I guess him being scared is justified, especially after I told him of my suspicions, but I don’t think it will help.

That’s all I know right now.

It’s been two days. And I feel the need to update this before posting, first things first, Landon has officially gone missing. In the middle of the night he disappeared. Now I’m really scared I might be next. I don’t hold out hope they are alive, Giselle has to be very angry to do all this. I guess it’s justified, but they don’t deserve to die! Call me crazy but I don’t think I deserve to die either…

In other news, the police investigation has made some breakthroughs. They found the man who shot Alyssa, he claimed he’s a hitman and that Gisselle’s mother hired him. Any sympathy I had for that lady is gone now, but I still wonder why her father would have deserved such a fate. But I guess we may never know, not unless Giselle is caught, and they’ve since been declared dead, so I doubt they’ll find them.

I’ve stopped going to school, I can hear someone outside my window, I can feel someone watching me. I don’t know if this is Giselle anymore, or this is a monster that’s gone mad. Either way, it’s watching me. And I’m sure I’m going to be next. I had to get this out, had to tell the story as I know it. Because no matter what police reports say; Giselle is not dead, and they’re angrier than ever.

#creepypasta #creepypasta story #creepypasta oc #original character #collab character #art #digital art #my art #my oc #backstory

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thedankfaerie · 4 years ago

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i am posting this here because i am tired of burdening my boyfriend with my feelings. this is a little nsfw. and this is my call for help. i dont know who to talk to anymore about this.

i need someone to hear what i feel

or at least, a free space to say what i feel

im in a low place. i feel so awful about myself and my body and i hate this feeling. i hate that this time last year, i was so happy about the way i looked. i was working this awful job that had me so overworked and overtired and poorly treated that i skipped meals and slept through meals regularly... i lost so much weight from stress in just a year and was the skinniest i had ever been. mentally, i was not in a good place being exploited by my managers... but my self esteem re: my body was at a new level i never knew could exist for me.

last year, i felt powerful and confident about my body, and i expressed that through sexuality. i was fucking my ex that i still liked (i grew out of wanting him back, but he never did, and it was nice to have the upper hand). i was also fucking an old fwb that i stayed friends with, that was also recently single, so we reunited again at the perfect time. i was also seeing this one guy (now my boyfriend) so if ever i got tired of the sex i at least was able to calm down and settle down with someone who genuinely wanted to know me. of course, i ended up catching feelings for this guy, and cut off the other two to pursue something more serious (we are now dating and are moving in together next month!) anyways, it was so nice to be wanted. to feel... i guess sexy? sex is empowering. and it shouldn’t be taboo to say that as a woman, or anyone really. i dont want to give off the message that a woman’s validation is fueled by men’s desire - but hey, don’t you feel flattered when someone thinks you’re attractive? desire and lust aren’t everything... but they matter. and they have an impact on how you feel about yourself, whether or not you believe me when i say that is up to you.

and i hate that i would gladly put myself through the stress that i did just to feel happy about my body. before the summer ended, i finally had enough and i quit my shitty job. i was jobless for a month, but was able to enjoy the rest of the summer with my new ‘skinny’ body - last year i took my first bikini picture ... a 2 piece! i have never done that. i still think about how happy i was that summer to look and feel good about myself.

i have struggled with self esteem issues since highschool. i always felt like i was too big. i used to follow all these blogs of pretty people and try to copy their poses to feel pretty and i used to spend hours after school trying on short dresses and clothes to stare at my body in the mirror. i used to starve myself to the point of literally wanting to faint on the daily, until finally i admitted it to one of my teachers. she respectfully asked if i wanted to speak with the school guidance counsellor, and i declined. but she encouraged me to speak up to at least a friend, so i did, and it helped, and for a long time, i was okay. after i graduated that teacher still checked up on me for a few years every now and again.

4th year university was when i realized how much i had let myself go. i was the heaviest i had ever been, it was my graduating year, i was looking for a job and was always worried about my grades. every time i was stressed or every time i needed to study i bought pad thai and bubble tea. a ritual. i didnt realize how much that had caught up to me until i saw old pictures of myself. at this point, i started my (shitty) job, straight out of graduation.

i actively avoided scales, i didn’t like looking at the number because it just made me upset. and i already felt upset looking in the mirror, i didn’t need something else to make me upset. but i did. and i was 20 pounds heavier than i was in highschool - the heaviest i had ever been.

i cried.

i didnt do much about it. i was too busy. my first job out of uni was a brand new daycare and i was head teacher of a toddler class - also i was the only staff on floor since there were not as many kids. there was nobody to train me, at all. i had to teach myself everything. i had no time.

a little while before starting the job, i met this guy. he was so hot, but such a dick - we had a “thing” but it was so toxic. he started off interested in me, but i turned him down. his attitude changed and he started being a douche, but we became friends because we were seeing each other so often. i didn’t have a car yet. he was driving me everywhere. he lived 5 minutes away. he was the type of friend that would text me “im outside, lets go out”. we hung out as friends at first, we would have “study dates”, until we started hooking up. we acted like a thing but he denied we were ever one - but got mad at me whenever i tried to look elsewhere. but i guess in that time, it was nice to be wanted, especially by someone so attractive.

but again, a year in that shithole job went by fast. i would stay late after work. i would come in on weekends. i was expected to not only help new kids transition, but train new partners. and given that my supers refused to support me, i watched a lot of people quit due to pressure. i had to keep retraining. and kids kept coming. that never stopped. i can honestly say my class wasn’t settled until december, and i started in september. everyday it was ‘its fine, it will get better’.

a year in that shithole, with 0 support, and i lost all the weight i gained - and more. i was the skinniest i had ever been. even in highschool. i looked at old pictures of myself from when i started the job at my heaviest. i couldnt believe that was me. and i was so happy looking at myself in the mirror. for once!

after i quit that job, i started another job that i hoped would be a happy ending.

and it wasn’t. it stressed me out just as much. i also moved out by this point, a month after i started this job. my hours are whack. 7-9, 11:30-6. i woke up early and got home late. i never had free time. my last shift at my old job was 7-3:30 and i had the whole day to myself. im someone that needs social interaction and alone time, and by the time i got home i was so tired, i would just cook, clean, shower, and go to bed. and that was my life. sometimes i would get so tired that i couldn’t cook, i just went and ate out. i tried to make personal time with my friends after work but by the time i reached their house, it was late, and places were closed. and id have to leave early anyways because i had work early the next day... so fast food was the only way to make this work. on top of this, this was the most difficult class that i had ever had. the kids behaviours’ were so difficult and i couldn’t handle it. i would cry in my car 3x a week. i would cry 4 minutes before my shift starts in the washroom and walk out and pretend i was okay. i would have my boyfriend come over as much as i could just so i could cry in his arms. i couldnt leave this job because i had just moved out and having a consistent rent payment was a huge responsibility for me. as well, if you know anything about ECEs in canada, just know we make shit pay. but this job pays me better than most ECE jobs... by a landslide. AND gives me benefits, which is so hard to find. i am still at this job - i was at my breaking point at the time covid started, so i was rejoicing when we closed for covid. i havent worked since march, but i needed that time off so desperately.

with that being said, i gained the weight back.

not everything, but i definitely could tell i was packing on some pounds.

cue covid.

i havent worked since march. i fell back into a lazy routine of ordering fast food. lying in bed. resting. just enjoying NOT dealing with my difficult class.

but i gained it all back. and i think im back at my heaviest weight. i picked up all my summer clothes from last year from my moms... half of them dont fit me. my favourite pair of shorts won’t close. i just sat and cried in a mess of clothes on my floor in front of the mirror. this was last week.

im trying to tell myself, ‘you’re in the middle of a global pandemic, go easy on yourself’... but do you know what it’s like to finally get what you’re chasing, and have it be taken away from you? i finally had a taste of what it was like to look AND feel good about myself. something ive wanted since i was a teenager...and it’s gone. it’s my fault and i accept that, so please don’t tell me i did this to myself. i know i did. but i can still be upset about it. i look in the mirror and i try to suck my stomach in and pretend nothing changed but its not the same. i see old pictures of myself, especially that bikini pic. ironically, i captioned it “i will never have the confidence to take a bikini pic again”... and here we are. i look at the clothes i wore last year and remember how fucking good i felt wearing them. i try putting them back on and seeing my stomach bulging and my arms looking fat and my love handles, something i didn’t see last year. and i just take them off and opt to wear something frumpier that doesnt hug my figure.

i try to tell people about how i feel but i cant take those ‘love yourself and all your flaws’ campaigns seriously. i dont think i can listen to another ‘you have to just keep faking it until you make it and if u just tell urself ur beautiful u will feel beautiful!’

because if you’re me, you know you cant kid yourself. if you’re me you can’t ‘love every flaw’. you fixate on them. and you let them define you. and if youre me, flaws are all you see.

i hate myself for getting back to this point.

i have a very supportive boyfriend that knows about all this, who is trying to actively get me to go on runs with him. we are trying to go for walks more and be out and about. he reminds me of little things, like if we are getting bubbletea he will suggest i go with less sugar. he is trying, we are trying. and i appreciate him so much.

today i complained in my car about this to my boyfriend, again. for the millionth time. and he still was supportive. but i just feel like i cant keep doing this to him. he said something today, which i think was him trying to give me a reality check to show me that i cant just wish i could starve myself and overwork myself to lose weight and call it a day... but it stung. he said “i don’t want to be with someone that’s not healthy. i have standards too” and i realized then he deserves so much better than to fucking babysit my complaining ass. i am 24. and i shouldnt be putting this on him. he is an adult with problems just as real as mine and i shouldnt be burdening him with this anymore.

im scared to talk to him about how that comment made me feel, because he’s so right, and he has every right to leave me. i would honestly. the amount that i worry and fixate on all my flaws and complain and have crying breakdowns about this is not fucking normal. and it shouldnt be his problem. i just want him to be with someone that doesnt give him this baggage. he met me in my ‘prime’ days when i just started getting my skinny body last year. when we finally started dating, we were super sexually active. and i mean, having sex like 15 times a week. im not kidding. now we havent had sex in almost an entire month. i dont feel sexy anymore and its impacting my sex drive.. he tries to start it with me and i just can’t because i feel like he is probably repulsed by my body. this is a huge huge huge problem, seeing as sex was a huge part of our relationship (we are very emotionally in tune with one another, but sex was a great addon because we both love it so much). i hate the way i look without clothes on. i cant bring myself to do it because it makes me feel like shit about myself.

but we are moving in together next month. and that is a huge step. and i am worried that i will never change, and he’s going to feel like he’s stuck with me because he’s moving 40 minutes away from his hometown to live with me. i almost want us to break up so he can be with someone with less baggage but i also love him and i want to be better for him and for us.

someone please help me.

#help #lol

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