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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 4 years ago

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Why do you think Tomarry would work? I see a lot of people hating on it and the only response I ever see is that they come from similar backgrounds or people just like enemies to lovers. Also which horcrux do you think Harry would go best with (including Voldemort)

So, this is probably a more complicated question than you intended, but that’s because I live in bizarre head canon lands that few ever dare venture towards.

With that, let’s get started.

But What Do You Really Ship, Muffin?

First, it probably bears saying that I’m not really a Tomarry shipper. I know, I’ve written more than one Tomarry story, so if that’s not Tomarry what is? Well, remember that those Tomarry pairing tags are a filthy lie. October I committed the grievous sin of breaking up the Tomarry and throwing Tom at Harry’s mother. Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus is barely a Harry Potter fic in any capacity, and while the ship is the driving force of the fic, it’s also this nebulous, distant, thing that really shows up only in strange side stories where I try to make people laugh. When Harry Met Tom is probably the closest that I take seriously, but I also intentionally subvert all your typical Tomarry tropes for my own enjoyment.

The only Tomarry story I’d say I’ve ever actually written is “The Burning Taste of Fire Whisky”. It’s a very popular story, sadly perhaps my most popular on Ao3, but I actually loathe it entirely.

A lot of the time I feel like I just happen to have a Tomarry shirt on and then I suddenly became a subject matter expert. If you want the Tomarry opinions from real Tomarry people, I’m probably not the best person to ask. In fact, if you want really any standard answer about Harry Potter anything, I’m not the best person to ask.

Now, I’m not just saying this to be a hipster but to sort of give some background for why I’m going to give the answer I’m going to give and why it’s going to be 100% different from everyone else’s and yes, sometimes, I do think I came from Mars.

Will the Real Tomarry Please Stand Up?

So with that, the bottom line is: taking canon as JKR intended, completely at face value, Tomarry doesn’t work at all. This is because JKR fully intends a very flat, one-dimensional, and frankly quite boring Tom Riddle. Tom Riddle’s evil, Tom Riddle was born evil, Tom Riddle was evil in the womb because of rape. He is completely and utterly irredeemable and understands nothing of love.

Well, that sort of sinks the ship right out of the harbor, doesn’t it? A Tom Riddle incapable of love is one incapable of growth, especially in a romantic focused story. If you try to write it you just get weird sociopathic whump porn where Tom probably whips Harry in a closet somewhere.

Added onto this we get that, despite what she put down on paper, Harry is supposed to be a straight man. That aside, he’s also a righteous man whose understanding of things like love and friendship mean he’d never sully himself with gross Tom Riddle. Ew, what are you people thinking?

Well, what if we take canon just mostly as JKR intended? What if we just look at the characters the way she actually wrote them versus what she was trying to do? Still no dice.

Tom might now be capable of love, be a far more engaging character who can go somewhere, and be pulled out of a pit of rage and despair by someone but that someone ain’t Harry.

First, while I firmly believe Harry is gay (gay, not bisexual, compare his descriptions of Cho/Ginny to Tom Riddle/Sirius Balck/Cedric Diggory/Charlie Weasley, that boy pants after Tom Riddle and Cho’s kiss is “wet”) he’s also a much worse person and much dumber character than JKR intended. It’s really the first that damns the pairing.

I have a whole giant post on how Harry’s a little yikes but the long and short of it is that while Harry thinks he understands friendship and love he’s also someone who will cut out his friends at a moment’s notice if he feels remotely slighted, uses and sacrifices them for his own ends, gleefully uses unforgiveable curses when given the opportunity, and is the kind of guy who would cut someone up in the bathroom, leave them to bleed to death, and only really feel bad about it when it seems he might get in trouble for it.

This Harry ending up even with a Tom who could potentially be redeemed would more likely lead to, well, weird psychopathic whump porn where Harry tortures Tom in his basement to make him pay for all the horrible things he’s done while Harry claims he’s the most moral person ever because his mother loved him.

So, yeah, no Tomarry for you.

But Wait, Didn’t You Say You Believed in Tomarry?

What I believe in are archetypes.

Remove what Harry’s supposed to be, remove what I think he actually is (one maladjusted, violent, dude with a whole lot of anger issues), let’s make Harry what perhaps JKR didn’t even know she wanted: one of those rare fundamentally good heroes who warps an entire story with the strength of their inner nobility.

Harry Potter is meant to be a story about love and friendship. Now, it’s not actually, and we sort of end with Harry being Jesus and none of us are sure why. Except that he apparently forgives Dumbledore and Snape for brainwashing him to be a kamikaze agent. They’re the bravest men he knows. But let’s pretend it actually is a story about love and friendship.

To me, the strongest story of love we could possibly have had in this world is the redemption of Tom Riddle. Here is a man who was supposed to have been irredeemable since birth, he has done many horrific and unforgiveable things, grew up in extreme hardship in a society that spits on everything he ever was, and is mired in bitterness, despair, and rage. Beneath all that, Tom Riddle has given up hope in the world and is now content to burn it down himself.

Harry, through the nobility of his spirit and integrity of his character, somehow managing to redeem Tom Riddle is not only a fascinating story but a very good one at its core. The fact that they are tied together by destiny as well as tragedy, that Harry houses a shard of Tom’s soul (and I do so love horcruxes), only makes it more so.

This is the kind of story that carries epics, and that is why I gravitate towards it.

Now, do I change Harry up to do so? Good god, yes. I wouldn’t say any Harry Potter I have written is anything close to the Harry we know from canon. Some are closer than others, but they always in some way deviate. That said, from what I’ve seen almost nobody writes the actual Harry we remember from canon, so this is a very standard practice I can get away with, without too many people calling foul.

Ultimately ending in tragedy or in the full redemption of Tom: either works with these base characterizations and the world is your oyster.

What About All Those Other Arguments?

I’m not going to get into this too much except that I wouldn’t argue Tomarry works for the reasons you list. At all.

On the similar backgrounds, the fact is Harry and Tom don’t have similar backgrounds, JKR just says they do because she likes that trope (and so do many of the readers).

Harry and Tom have dark hair, they both came from abusive homes, but that’s where the similarities start and end. Upon entering the wizarding world Harry is treated very very very differently from Tom Riddle.

Harry, grows up in this weird sort of pseudo poverty where he dresses in rags because the Dursley’s hate him but he never actually has to worry about money. When he gets to the wizarding world he can afford everything he wants. He can buy a new wand, he can buy new supplies, he can buy all the candy off the trolly cart. Money’s not an object to Harry, is barely even a concept.

Tom Riddle is presumably on scholarship and money is everything to him. He buys a new wand but likely all his clothes and books are second hand. He can’t buy whatever candy he wants, probably can’t afford gifts for his peers, Tom is very aware of the haves and have nots.

Harry similarly never has to worry about a career. He never gets that far, fearing for his life so much, but the fact is that Harry has enough money that he doesn’t actually need to work. More, who would turn down the great Harry Potter? He wants to be an auror, is afraid he might not qualify, but it’s not really desperate.

Tom Riddle is to the world an impoverished muggle born. He tries for the Defense position and is turned down mostly because Dumbledore threw shade. Dumbledore tries to make it seem like Tom desperately wanted to work in this weird shop in London’s magical back alley, but probably that was the only position Tom could get (everything Dumbledore ever says, especially in those pensieve lessons, must be taken with a large grain of salt). Everything else goes to friends, family, and purebloods.

Adding to this, Harry has this glowing reputation. Now, Harry might not like it, he might want to be just Harry but the fact is that everyone has heard of him and most people worship the ground he walks on. Doors are open to him everywhere. His first introduction to the wizarding world is from a man who loves him and gushes about Harry as a baby.

Tom Riddle is someone with a muggle last name, who comes from a muggle orphanage, in other words he is nobody from nowhere. (For reasons I won’t get into here I find it very doubtful Tom ever revealed he was the heir of Slytherin until he became Voldemort and let Tom Riddle fade into obscurity). His first introduction to the wizarding world is some asshole lighting all his stuff on fire because the matron talked shit about him.

Harry wants to stay at Hogwarts because the Dursleys are abusive. Yes, this is terrible, but Tom wants to stay because Nazis are bombing London and Dippet says, “So sorry, Tom, no exceptions. Enjoy those luffas!” Harry’s concerns are never treated with the same disdain.

To make a long story short, they do not have similar backgrounds, at all. To say they do is utterly laughable and not much better than saying “they both have dark hair, they have so much in common!”

They both came from abusive homes, yes, but even the nature of those homes were very different and when they went to Hogwarts they were worlds apart.

... So much for not getting into it, eh?

As for Enemies to Lovers, well, it’s a trope and people enjoy it but it’s not my jam. I could go into why, but I think I’ve said enough.

Which Horcrux Do You Think Harry Would Go Best With?

We see so little of the individual horcruxes I’m not sure I can really take a stab at this. I sort of just make up their personalities as it suits me every time I write them.

With that I suppose I’m partial to the one in Harry’s head? Given that he has a front row seat to Harry, has seen Voldemort’s tragic demise, I think he’s in the best position to end up with Harry in a meaningful manner.

Especially as, if you think about it, he could represent the very last of Tom Riddle’s humanity. The single shard of humanity that remained in him until the bitter end.

#ask #anon #tom riddle #harry potter #headcanons #tomarry #archetypes #redemption #enemies to lovers

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writingithink · 4 years ago

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Tangled Timelines Chapter 1 Rated: T Wordcount: 5,895 Summary: The Doctor and Rose have some news to share with Jackie, but the trip doesn't go quite as planned. Notes:Hello! This is my fic for the Classic Tropes Event. Mine was Fix-It Fic. This one is going to be a multi-chapter, with more tags added as I go. For those of you who have been reading the whole series, I actually plan to finish up the honeymoon fics (they've just been giving me grief). So those will come later, with edits to series order etc etc. If you haven't read the series, I think you should be okay? They're bonded. It was an accident. That should be all the info you really need. All of the thanks ever imaginable to @hey-there-juliet for betaing <33 All mistakes are most definitely mine (esp since I did a lot of glaring at this thing after it was beta'd). I own nothing.

Multiple trips to the TARDIS' library and seemingly endless cross-referencing all culminated in the moment the large tome slipped from the Doctor's hands and onto the bed. It knocked against Rose’s leg and his eyes automatically moved to her face - still asleep. Since their bonding, his wife had gotten used to him bringing various things into bed with them for when he inevitably got bored while she slept.

“And you couldn’t alert me to this, because …?” he whispered to his ship, voice flat and eyes wide as his brain struggled to assimilate everything he had just read.

There was no answer from the TARDIS, not even a hum of acknowledgement. It figured.

The Doctor scrubbed his hand across his face before leaving the bed, heading straight to the infirmary despite the fact that he was only wearing boxers and a vest. This time he didn’t ask his inconsiderate ship for any assistance, simply pulled up every single file on Rose Marion Tyler that existed, on the TARDIS or not. It only took seconds to hack into Earth hospital files, after all.

Not that they helped much, as the technology used in Rose’s time was appallingly primitive.

“Level five medical garbage,” he muttered to himself, zooming past all of her records. Vaccines, minor illnesses, nothing that gave him a good picture of Rose Marion Tyler before she stepped onto the TARDIS. Which, overall, was a good thing - it meant that she had never been so hurt that she needed a CAT scan or an MRI. It would have just been nice to have the data, what with his near obsessive compulsive desire to have the most complete picture of his wife’s biological history.

It’s as if no one had ever heard of voluntary medical data filing. But so be it. The TARDIS had more than enough base scans, starting from the first moment Rose set foot on the ship. This time he wasn’t going to cut corners like he had before, when he’d looked at just her telepathic centers and absolutely nothing else.

Thinking about the last time he and his wife had been in here, weeks ago, the Doctor opened a new screen to check the progress of the six-dimensional comprehensive deep scan results. They were nearly complete.

A feeling of dread lodged in his stomach.

They should have been finished ages ago. The fact that they weren’t -

He shook his head, wiping a hand down his face as he swiveled back to the primary view screen. The base scans should be able to offer him an explanation. Would. They would, because he needed to know exactly what was going on.

The TARDIS had automatically compiled all base scans since their last visit, and his previous parameters were still in place, focused solely on what in humans was called the pineal gland. The Doctor wasn’t sure that name quite applied for Rose’s brain anymore - Epiphysis Cerebri seemed like a much more accurate name for her telepathic center, which was still showing slow, incremental growth.

Fingers moving quickly, he navigated away and started gathering new information. Graphs of brain capacity and function, cellular activity and health, levels of all hormones and neurotransmitters and molecules with a special search for anything that wouldn’t normally be found in a 21st century Earth human.

Waiting for the TARDIS to compile all of these graphs felt like torture, even though it took a relatively short amount of time.

And then he had screens and screens of data all vying for his considerable attention and painting a picture that had his hearts going into overdrive, adrenaline throttling through his systems. Terror. Elation. Fear. Hope. All of his emotions were muddled and changing by the nanosecond. Panic was a constant, however.

All of it was so overpowering that the Doctor soon found himself actively fighting his traitorous body as it tried to enter a completely unnecessary healing trance, confused as it was by his sudden inability to keep control of processes that he generally had a tight grip on.

Two hands fell onto his shoulders, shocking him into jumping up, nearly crashing into the infirmary’s computational system. He whirled around to see the confused and frightened face of his bondmate.

“Doctor?” she asked, hesitating.

He wondered how long she had been trying to speak to him, both verbally and through their bond. Covering his face with both hands, he finally got his breathing back in order and his hearts-rate down.

“Sorry,” he finally managed, once he was capable of speech again, though the single word came out hoarse and scratchy.

“What’s happening? What’s wrong?” Rose asked, still not moving, hands fisted at her sides.

Focusing on their connection, he could feel her overwhelming concern … for him. Well, it did make sense in the ironic way these things always tended to. Since she had been asleep when he left her, the Doctor hadn’t put any thought into shielding. All of his emotions must have barreled into her like a freight train. Couldn’t have possibly been a pleasant way to wake up.

Reluctantly he dropped his hands, palms sliding down his face slowly as he gave up their paltry defense.

“Nothing’s wrong per se,” he hedged, wincing as her mental disbelief permeated their link. “It- it’s more complicated than that. It’s-”

He didn’t know how to explain it. His normally ever-present gob seemed to be offline now that he desperately needed it. Telepathic communication seemed to also be out, as his brain was still in the process of resettling from the accidentally self-induced bulldozing of his basic systems.

“It’s what?”

As the Doctor took another deep breath, Rose looked around, seeming to just realize where they were. She must have raced through the TARDIS to get to him in her worry. He felt incredibly guilty.

“It’s something that we would probably be much more comfortable discussing somewhere else,” he decided, scratching the hairs at the nape of his neck and looking down, shocked to realize that he was nearly naked. ��Maybe after getting dressed. And a shower. Breakfast. Not in that order!”

Rose sighed and crossed her arms. The Doctor took a moment to notice her clothing, which consisted of a housecoat and slippers, but he couldn’t tell what she had on underneath (if anything).

“And then we’ll talk?” she questioned, both eyebrows raised, getting his mind back on track.

“Yes. Definitely. How does tea in the library sound?”

Her lips were pursed, but she eventually nodded.

“Good. Great! And I- I’m really, truly sorry for worrying you,” he sighed, finally moving forward and wrapping his arms around his impossible wife. It took a few moments before Rose relaxed into the embrace.

“This is about me, isn’t it?” she whispered after a few long, silent moments.

“Shh,” he scolded. “Shower first. Shower, clothes, food, then talking.”

Procrastination really is just a different type of running, and no one knew that better than the Doctor. He also knew that he wasn’t fooling Rose for a moment. Their bond was still wide open, the contents of their impending discussion only hidden due to the fact that it was all categorized in his mind as ‘scientific information’, and therefore held back by one of the many barriers he kept permanently in place so that he wouldn’t inundate his bondmate with headache inducing amounts of information.

“Alright then,” she conceded, “let’s get going.”

The Doctor took her hand as she pulled away, allowing himself to be led through his time ship. In his current, nebulous state he doubted he’d be able to find their room if he tried. He was just grateful that Rose understood that his desire to put off this conversation didn’t mean he wanted to be separated from her in the slightest.

It was funny, sometimes, to imagine that all of the effort he had previously put into studiously trying to not overwhelm her with just how much he wanted to almost always be in her presence had been completely inverted now that all of their cards were forever on the table.

They got into the shower together and he began to wash his wife’s hair as if on auto-pilot, only refocusing on the present moment when feelings of relaxation and contentment began to pierce through the veil of unpleasant emotions tangled across their shared minds. Once the shampoo rinsed away, the Doctor couldn’t stop himself from cupping her face and pulling her into a relatively chaste kiss. Maybe, just maybe, he could convince himself that everything would all truly be alright (for once). Because one thing that had been clear while looking through her scans was that Rose was perfectly healthy. Her life wasn’t threatened in the slightest.

Things were just … different.

Before he was quite ready, they had finished showering, were both fully clothed, somehow tea and toast had been made (though he barely remembered being in the galley), and they had reached the library. Rose immediately sat down on the sofa, a fire already crackling away in the grate. He followed her, taking a large gulp of his beverage the moment he sat down. For all of the time he had spent trying to organize his thoughts, they were still less than refined.

The problem was, despite being bonded and therefore having an intimate knowledge of her thought processes, the Doctor still couldn’t predict how she would react to any of what he’d discovered in the hours his wife had spent sleeping. And despite the fact that she wasn’t actually saying anything, he did know that she was growing more and more impatient by the second.

“Sooo,” he began, hoping that the rest of the words would just happen, as it were, “this is cozy, innit?”

Obviously it didn’t work.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” she suggested.

“Oh, blimey, alright then. Well, billions of years ago, a cataclysmic explosion of a singularity caused what you could refer to as the Big Bang, Event One, or even just ‘creation’. It resulted in a very compact, tiny universe that was very dense and very hot, riddled with dimension pockets and full of space-time anomalies that are now considered exceedingly rare. These were the beginnings of the Dark Times, of which not much is known - time travel so far back was-”

“Doctor,” Rose interrupted, “does this have anything to do with what has you so upset? The, erm, results?”

“Ah, well, no … not as such. I mean, it’s tangentially related to absolutely everything, of course, but it … right, sorry.” He took another sip of tea, followed by a deep breath. The beginning, but not that beginning. “I finally tracked it down. Old texts, ancient, that had descriptions of telepathic marriage bonds. Took ages to find one that sounded right, though. Apparently most ancient Gallifreyans needed to have the assistance of an experienced telepath who specialized in this kind of thing in order to join their minds. Knew that couldn’t be right, so I kept on digging and when I-”

The words were flowing out now, faster than he could keep track of and for once he was aware of just how irrelevant they were. With a huff he stood up and began to pace in front of the fire, hoping that the movement would help.

“Very old, very rare, very specific. That’s what our bond is. There isn’t even a translation for what they called it, the word would be absolutely meaningless to anyone else, anyone who hasn’t experienced it for themselves. It’s the specificity, though, that made me realize that there was much more at work than just your growing telepathic abilities. When I went to the infirmary, it was really a toss up - either I was right or I was wrong and hadn’t found the proper information yet.”

“But you weren’t wrong, were you?” She bit her bottom lip, eyes tracking him as he moved back and forth across the sitting area that for once seemed much too small.

“No,” the Doctor sighed, running his fingers through his hair. “The 6D scans will probably be ready later today, but I didn’t need those. Just different graphs of your base scans to measure different things. The thing is,” he nearly shouted, “if I hadn’t been about to regenerate, and then freshly regenerated, and then unpardonably distracted, I should have done this all ages ago! Quick as I could after I’d taken the Vortex out of you.”

“Think we were a bit busy savin’ the Universe to bother with all that,” Rose pointed out, comfort and understanding passing over to him through their link, along with a few spikes of irritation and general chastisement for pointlessly blaming himself for something yet again.

“And what’s my excuse for after all that?” he drawled, unwilling to let her absolve him for this appalling negligence of her health and well-being. What kind of doctor was he, if he couldn’t be arsed to take adequate care of the woman he loved?

“Maybe, I dunno, the fact that I felt absolutely fine? That we were busy navigating all your new quirks and preferences while still saving planets? Anyway, you still haven’t even told me what’s going on.”

The Doctor scrunched up his face as he dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. She was right, obviously. Somehow he was still managing to procrastinate. His teeth ground slightly as he set his jaw and made his way back to the couch.

“You have a large amount of artron energy,” he began. “More than just background radiation. Way more. I would say life threatening amounts, except you also are absolutely riddled with huon particles. Also deadly.”

“Huon particles?”

“Eradicated by the Time Lords near the end of the dark times - oh, look at that, it all came back ‘round, sort of.”

“But you just said they were deadly,” Rose frowned. “Why does it sound like they’re a good thing? I mean, your people obviously had a reason for gettin’ rid of ‘em all. How’re they even there?”

Oh, his magnificent, brilliant, fantastic bondmate - always asking the right questions. A small smile lighted her face as she caught the thought.

“See, the TARDIS is connected to the Vortex, which goes all the way back - remnants of huon particles exist in her heart, which you opened up and used to merge with her, a whole fifth dimension running through the both of you. The huon particles are stabilizing the artron energy - it’s feeding them instead of overtly impacting the rest of your body. So in this case, this one case, the reemergence of deadly particles from the dawn of time is a good thing. Even so, that wouldn’t be enough, except you didn’t just merge with the Vortex alone but with the TARDIS. The TARDIS emits chronon particles, and one of the key differences between Time Lords and non-Time Lord Gallifreyans is that our bodies are surrounded by a bio-plasmic field of chronon energy, allowing us to bond with a TARDIS.”

“Oh. Right, that’s why when you were sick the TARDIS wasn’t working properly. Couldn’t translate for us.”

“Yes, yes, exactly.” The Doctor got back to his feet, the need to pace outweighing his desire to remain close to his wife. “Now, the thing about having a surrounding field is that it can, er, leach on to others. Infect them. Not in a bad way. It’s what provides me with protection from the time stream, helps with cell rejuvenation, etcetera. So actually, if a bit of it didn’t migrate away to those I’m close with, I’d never be able to bring anyone along on the TARDIS with me. Too dangerous. Thing is, you have your own now, not just an echo of mine. Which makes sense. You two became one, of course she would bond with you as well. Thing is, to do that - your DNA, Rose. Becoming Bad Wolf. It’s given you symbiotic chronon nuclei.”

“And what’s that, then? Something to do with the chronon particles?”

“In a sense. It’s only viewable with a temporal reading, which the TARDIS base scans do automatically, because that’s what’s normal for me. She doesn’t change protocols just because the other person she’s scanning happens to be human. I’ve mentioned before that I have TNA. Triple helix instead of double, yes?”

Rose nodded, taking a wary sip of her tea.

“Well, it’s actually a bit more complicated than that. Properly, temporally scanned it’s actually four strands. That symbiotic chronon nuclei is the physical, quasi-symbiotic link between the TARDIS and I. Now you have one too.”

“So wait, I’ve got four strands of DNA now? And we didn’t even notice?” Her mug clattered onto the table as she deposited it and stood quickly.

“No, no, no, just the three. No TNA. But this is where things get complicated.”

“You mean there’s more ?” she screeched, going paler than she already had been, thoughts becoming a whirl of panic. “Isn’t it complicated enough?!”

“Weeeeeell, let’s go back to that third strand I’ve got, yeah? It’s pretty much, and by pretty much I mean almost the sole reason, that regeneration is possible. Stores all the information for past and future incarnations, as well as other things,” he explained, waving his hands around, “and as far as I understood it, that’s what allowed for a Gallifreyan’s self-replicating biogenic molecules.”

“Your what?”

“Remember the nanogenes?” he asked, finally walking back to her in order to weave their fingers together.

“Yeah, ‘course.”

“Gallifreyan bodies have something like that. Biological nanites. Not only do they allow for regeneration, but on a daily basis they repair and prune any damaged or malformed cells. Hence why we age so slowly. I’ll look just like this for hundreds of years yet.”

She nodded slowly. “And lemme guess, I’ve got those too, somehow.”

“Yes. Though wired differently than mine, You’re still human , Rose. Just … with genetic modifications. Powerful genetic modifications. Obviously meant to keep you alive, because really, thinking about it properly, you shouldn’t have survived the trip back to the gamestation, much less been able to accomplish everything you did. A symbiotic self-renewing cell structure is really the obvious solution to the problem, and if you did have TNA like I do, the gigantic surge of artron energy would have triggered a regeneration, just like it did for me. But your body doesn’t work that way, so it just- just healed the damage, no mess, no fuss.”

“And they’re still there now, healing stuff?”

The Doctor nodded.

“So what does it all mean, then, exactly? Without all of the science babble.”

“Without it?” He winced at the way his voice nearly squeaked.

“As little of it as you can get away with,” Rose conceded, the smidge of laughter in her voice doing wonders for his frayed nerves.

“Alright. Well, your cell death is almost non-existent. Your brain activity, in addition to the new telepathic adjustments, has increased in both capacity and function. You likely haven’t noticed because you haven’t tried to stretch things more than average, and why would you? Despite all of these changes, it’s not like you really knew about them or have had any sort of training on how to incorporate them aside from our telepathy lessons. With the way you’re connected to the TARDIS, you could probably learn to sense time. That’s what allows for most of my time senses, by the way.”

“Doctor, less babble,” his wife helpfully reminded him.

“Right, yes, well,” he swallowed audibly, “the main thing is … you’re not going to age at the same rate as everyone else you know. Everyone human, that is. There’s no way for me to be certain how long your life might be, since our timelines are too tightly wound together.”

“They are?”

“Of course they are.” At this, the Doctor finally smiled, wrapping his arms around her. “That’s the thing, the crucial thing, about the bond. Why I needed to check the scans to make sure. It exists not just because we love each other, not just because we have compatible minds, but because our timelines were able to be synced. Literally able to be together forever, however long forever might be. This connection we have, it’s not the kind that can be forced, it can only happen spontaneously. In fact, from what I’ve read, the existence of this form of bond is exactly why the practice of making less deep and all encompassing ones came into being. Others who weren’t as, as destined for each other, for lack of a better word, wanted the same kind of intimacy. And of course it fell out of favor, not just because of Gallifrey’s abandonment of emotional ties in general, but because of the pain associated with losing a partner you’ve permanently telepathically merged with.”

“So that, us … we won’t have that?”

“I can’t view my own timeline and I can’t view yours, but I do know that they’re so tightly twined that you can’t tell the two apart. I can feel it, and maybe someday you will be able to on your own, but for now I can always show you,” he offered.

“I- I’d like that, but …” Rose trailed off, biting her lip and looking away.

“What?”

“’S just, you were so, so upset earlier. And it’s definitely a lot to take in, but, I mean, doesn’t it all seem like a good thing?” she asked, turning back toward him, eyes locking with his and broadcasting her pained confusion just as adequately as the bond itself was.

“For me? Of course it is, and the selfish part of me has never been more happy. But Rose, you have to understand that I wasn’t trying to be dramatic that night, outside of the chippy, when I said that my lifespan was a curse. You’re going to outlive everyone you know and love, aside from me. You won’t age at the same rate that they do. And I know that it’s expected for children to outlive their parents, but you’re going to spend far longer without your mother than with her. This … it was never something I wanted for you, the pain of so many goodbyes.”

Rose shut her eyes before burrowing her head into his chest, holding him tighter. For a long time they were silent, though the Doctor could hear her racing thoughts as she tried to process all of the information he had shoved at her in such a short period of time. He was content to just hold her, rubbing a soothing arm up and down her back until a singular thought rang out across their bond that had her gasping and him groaning.

We have to tell mum.

The Doctor spun around the console in a whirlwind, Rose clinging to the jumpseat. He could feel her trepidation as they landed, her worry about her mother’s reaction to their news. So he wasn’t surprised in the slightest at her shock upon opening the TARDIS' door and finding them very much not on Earth.

“Think your driving’s a bit more off than usual,” she noted vaguely as he finally stepped away from the console to grab his jacket.

“Is it really?” He gave her a look of wide eyed bewilderment, just as his thoughts inevitably revealed that he had had no intention of making the trip to Jackie’s - yet.

Rose crossed her arms, giving him an unconvincing glare as the Doctor finally met her at the door and stuck his head outside.

“Ah, perfect!” he exclaimed. “Right where I wanted to be.”

“Oh, really? And where’s that then?” his wife asked, finally stepping out of their ship and having a look around. There were rows and rows of stalls and booths as far as the eye could see.

“It’s a bazaar. On an asteroid. Moves around every four cycles to a different asteroid in a different sector. Used to just be a handful of merchants and artisans and performing artists, a sort of circus, if you will, only without the mistreated animals and exploited people. Was called Mz’trak’s Marvelous Moving Menagerie - gotta love that alliteration, absolutely amazing. But as you can see, it grew. Doesn’t have a name now. Too much going on. Still, organized enough to make it’s trip across the quadrant. They span galaxies, Rose Tyler! This is the place to go to find anything you could possibly imagine!”

“Okay,” she said slowly, drawing out the word as she turned back to face him. “And what, exactly, are we lookin’ for that’s so important that you’re putting off visiting mum?”

“Oh, right, see, about that - I thought, maybe, just maaaybe, you’d be able to find something for her here. To, erm, soften the blow, as it were. Butter her up a bit.” Make her less likely to regenerate me, he didn’t say, but he didn’t have to. The thought was pretty much blaring on a loop that his bondmate was unlikely to miss.

“Seriously?! Doctor, if you hide away again and force me to have this talk all on my own, I swear-”

“No, no, I won’t! We’ll do this together, I promise!” he hastened. No need to have two angry Tylers on his hands.

“Honestly, I don’t know why you’re so afraid of her,” Rose said with a roll of her eyes before taking his hand and beginning to walk through the market.

Normally she buzzed up to nearly every stall, wanting to see as many strange and novel alien things as possible, but this time his wife was quickly passing them by, categorizing everything in their immediate vicinity as ‘too alien’. Admittedly, the Doctor hadn’t given that much consideration when he decided that a gift for his mother-in-law would be a good plan.

“It’s a premonition I have, really,” he told her, “that your mum will be the death of me. Unlikely, I’ll give you that, but you never know. Sometimes these things have merit. I was once very good at that kind of thing, seeing the future. Well, not really. More like an unconscious tracking of future timelines that seems like a form of prescience but is really-”

“You are so full of it,” Rose laughed. “But speaking of past yous, I’m not going to regenerate, am I?”

While the Doctor had thought that he’d been very clear in the library earlier, perhaps he hadn’t explained very well. Too much ‘science babble’, probably.

“Nope,” he assured her, popping the ‘p’ and giving her one of his best grins.

“So Bad Wolf didn’t make me into a Time Lord. Just …”

“Bad Wolf didn’t do any such thing,” he frowned. “If you want, I can show you the second by second time stamps of the scans the TARDIS took of you during all that - constant state of danger, there’s hundreds of them. But no, the TARDIS did all of that herself so that you two could become Bad Wolf. If you recall, our ship is a multidimensional alien being that even I don’t completely understand. And she likes you. A lot. Didn’t want you to die.”

He stopped himself, barely, from continuing on (again) about how he should have realized this all ages ago. There was really no point to it, just his wounded ego. Plus, who had time for brooding, anyway?

“Sure she doesn’t just like you a lot?” his wife asked with a smirk. “Y’know, making sure the girl her pilot likes so much has a matching lifespan?”

The Doctor abruptly stopped his near-skipping and pulled Rose into his arms with a growl.

“Oh, I much more than like you, Rose Tyler.”

“That so?” his cheeky wife asked him with a tongue touched grin.

Minx, he chastised telepathically, his mouth now busy as he dipped her into a snog that was likely inappropriate for public, but for once she wasn’t complaining.

“Also,” he added, after breaking the kiss so that she could catch her breath, “it would be Time Lady, you know. And that is a little complicated, now that I think about it. Because you’re not Gallifreyan, but not all Gallifreyan’s are Time Lords or Time Ladies. Then again, you have the bit of genetic jiggery pokery that makes a Gallifreyan a Time, er-”

“Let’s just go with Time Lord, yeah?”

“It’s a hypothetical political correctness jumble,” he muttered with a grimace.

“So I’m a bit like a human Time Lady? Kind of?”

“Kind of. Eh. Doesn’t really matter, though, does it?”

Rose had gone back to scanning the booths, but was quick to turn her sharp gaze back to him. “How could it not matter?”

“Well, I mean, you’re still Rose Tyler. Doesn’t matter to me, what kind of species you call yourself. The important thing is that you’re you, and I get to keep you.”

And the Doctor could tell that she didn’t exactly agree with him, all of the ramifications of this still buzzing around in her head and the impending talk with Jackie making her permanently anxious. But still, she smiled at him and squeezed his hand.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

Finally some stalls came up that looked promising and his bondmate began looking at things in earnest. As he watched her flit about, the thought began to really settle in. They would be able to stay together, not just for the very short human forever that he had struggled to come to terms with, but for his forever.

The weight of the Universe on his shoulders had never felt lighter.

It suddenly did seem a little bit ridiculous, all of his worries about Jackie’s reaction. At least when it came to him . Over 900 years old, he could (probably) take it. If anything, he was more concerned for Rose. If (or really, it was more likely to be when) her mother reacted poorly, she would undoubtedly be hurt.

Flashes of their ‘marriage announcement’ briefly passed through his mind.

This time, though, he would be there for her. Absolutely no swanning off or hiding or cowering of any sort. Well, minimal cowering. Can’t set the bar too high, knowing he was about to get a smack (even if none of it was actually his fault). It would all be worth it in the end, being able to spend the rest of his life with the woman he loved.

“Do you think mum would like this?” Rose asked, interrupting his chaotic stream of thought.

“What’s that?” The Doctor walked closer to the booth, finally taking notice of his surroundings instead of blindly following his wife. “Oh! These are all made of bazoolium! That’s brilliant!” he exclaimed, touching a large piece that was either intended to be abstract art or a Raqkle Bear about to attack, unsurprised by the neutral temperature. After all there was no weather to speak of on the asteroid.

“Yeah, he was just tellin’ me that they could predict the weather,” she said, gesturing toward the shopkeeper. The Doctor barely spared him a glance before investigating the ones that were combined with wind chimes, surprised when the chimes were actually made of bazoolium as well.

“They’re not incredibly unlike the barometers you lot have, only much more accurate. The truly impressive part is the fact that this property is naturally occurring in the mineral. Plus there’s really not much interpreting to it - if it’s hot, you’ll have a nice sunshine-y day, and if it’s cold there’ll be rain. Or snow, I suppose. But all you have to do is touch it. Definitely simple enough for Jackie to get use of-”

He winced when Rose telepathically zapped him, which he really should have seen coming.

After apologizing, the Doctor (for the most part) kept his mouth shut as she selected a small one that looked as un-alien as possible, something that any of Jackie’s friends would look at and think was some random tchotchke, just a thing and then think nothing of it. As soon as she finished her purchase, he took her hand and reluctantly headed back the way they came.

In a private corner of his mind he had come up with thousands of different ideas for putting this next trip off, but eventually discarded every single one of them (even if some were astonishingly brilliant). His wife wanted to get this over with, so that’s what they were going to do.

If anything, he regretted putting all of their efforts into getting her mother some bauble to put her in a good mood when they should have also been coming up with a plan for distracting her after this ‘talk’.

“Distracting her? How would we possibly distract her?” Rose wondered aloud.

The Doctor felt strangely giddy, knowing that she’d been paying attention to him over the bond. They were starting to get pretty good at not constantly acknowledging all of the thoughts that were projected without real intent, so much so that he sometimes wondered if his wife was listening most of the time. His thoughts were very interesting, after all, so he wasn’t sure how she could ignore them if she wasn’t just tuning it all out.

She rolled her eyes, making it clear that she’d caught all of that as well.

“I don’t know,” he went on, “I’m not sure what would hold her attention, aside from gossip and telly. Maybe we should nip into the future, get some Eastenders DVDs. Or some tabloids. Then again, I doubt your mother could keep her future knowledge a secret and next thing you know, we’ll have a paradox on our hands. Can’t have that.”

Rose laughed as they entered the TARDIS.

“Dunno if it’s really much of a distraction, but I do have some laundry I’ve been meaning to bring over.”

Now it was his turn to roll his eyes. “I refuse to believe your mother actually enjoys doing your laundry. There’s a perfectly good laundry room in the TARDIS. You don’t even have to do much of anything. Just put your clothes down the chute and she’ll do all the rest, even the folding.” And yes, he had told her all of this before, on multiple occasions - every time she had laundry to bring back, in fact.

So the Doctor wasn’t surprised when she said, “It makes her feel useful. She likes doing mum stuff for me.”

She said something along those lines every time. This time, however, his responding ‘fine’ was telepathic, rather than verbal as he began piloting them into the Vortex and she disappeared down the corridor to gather said laundry.

Since he was going to have to wait until Rose was finished before flying them to Jackie’s (let it not be said that he can’t learn a lesson) he almost followed her to their room. But just as he moved away from the console, he sensed that his bondmate could use some privacy while she got her thoughts in order, trying to decide exactly what she was going to say to her mum, not wanting to get into absolutely everything.

So he sat down on the jumpseat, kicked his feet onto the console, and focused on sending soothing emotions over their bond. Eventually, Rose reappeared with her giant red duffle, looking plenty nervous but definitely less so than she’d been before.

“Ready?” he asked, hopping back to his feet.

“No,” she sighed, dropping the bag onto the newly vacated seat before flashing him a wary grin. “Let’s go.”

#dw fanfiction #ficandchips #ten x rose #timepetals #tenrose #dw classic trope event #fandom: doctor who #pairing: rose x doctor #my fic #fic: tangled timelines

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satonthelotuspier · 5 years ago

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❄️ Untamed Winter Fest 2019 ❄️

Day 30 - Wish - 1.4k

The form this fic takes is mostly exerpts from correspondence between WWX/JC. I think the idea was probably better than the execution in the end but this is the concept I wanted to go with for Wish.

This does take place in the same verse as from Day 13 and Day 29 but you don’t need to have read either, Day 13 involves the cave mentioned in this fic and both include the discussions that set this up, in summary.

Disclaimer: I’ve never given myself this level of sad from writing before - maybe my poor execution didn’t get it across very well but if you want to avoid sads I’d probably give it a miss just in case.

The letter was waiting for Wei Wuxian when he returned to the Jingshi that evening. He knew it’s origin due to the familiar lotus seal. He took the letter and a jar of Emperor’s Smile which Lan Wangji had left out for him and walked out on to the veranda to read it.

The aggressive, bold script was definitely Jiang Cheng’s, but he read the content several times, at first convinced he’d misunderstood. The letter was neither addressed nor signed, but it didn’t need to be.

Jiang Cheng to Wei Wuxian

I wish my brother knew that I listened while we were trapped in the cave. That I heard him and deep down I wanted that too.

I wish he knew how much this grief had consumed me and eaten me up from the inside until there was nothing else left for years.

Someone said to me recently that now all accounts are settled its time to look to the future and let go of the past.

I wish I knew if that was possible, but I want it to be.

I wish my brother knew that I will try, that I want to make the things I said in that cave no longer true.

Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure how he felt and found himself pacing, trying to digest both what Jiang Cheng was and also wasn’t saying.

And really he felt a flare of pride at him, because wasn’t he adapting the best he could to the circumstances to make the best chance of making himself understood?

It was incredibly insightful of him.

Jiang Cheng wasn’t comfortable talking about his emotions; he never had been and his mouth and temper often ran away with themselves. This was without a doubt the best way for him to calmly and logically approach this kind of discussion. You had to consider what words were put into a letter, meaning it was thought out. If you were angry you had time to calm down and think better of what you’d written, whereas words couldn’t be unsaid. And it was so much easier to say some things when you didn’t have to verbalise them in the presence of the other person, especially when you weren’t actually writing to that person, but instead to some nebulous, unnamed entity.

And most importantly it was cathartic.

He dashed back into the Jingshi and put a brush, ink and paper out onto the desk and began to write in his own rushed, careless hand.

Wei Wuxian to Jiang Cheng

I wish my brother knew how happy I was that I had the opportunity to speak person to person with him in the cave, even though what we discussed wasn’t easy for either of us.

I wish he knew that talking through the hard, hurtful things is an important first step to being able to let them go, so even though what we discussed was mostly at odds, they were things that needed to be said.

I wish there was a magic that could erase the past, or dull it’s effects. I would have never ever hurt him or any of my family on purpose.

I wish I could have protected them all; I promised Madam Yu so faithfully, yet still failed in everything but one thing; saving his cultivation.

I wish I knew whether being honest from the start with my brother would have made any kind of difference to the outcome.

Jiang Cheng to Wei Wuxian

I wish my brother knew it wasn’t his responsibility to look after us, he was as much a child as the rest of us. There were schemes within schemes none of us could have guessed at and we were all equally pawns.

I’ve often thought of how much I regretted being so easily manipulated into leaving his side after the Sunshot Campaign. I wish he knew that.

I was so young and naive, easily lead and too concerned over what others thought of me. I wish I’d told them all to fuck off as was my first instinct.

But what they did, the whispers in the ear, was insidious and easily overlooked by an inexperienced boy struggling to build up a destroyed sect from the ashes of Lotus Pier.

Wei Wuxian to Jiang Cheng

I wish my brother understood that I didn’t blame him for being easily manipulated, the forces at work were masters of the underhand and fooled the entire cultivation world for years.

I would never deny it still hurt though.

It was lonely and scary to be the only thing standing between those innocent people and destruction.

I wish I hadn’t tried to interact with the world at all; if I’d just stayed on the Burial Mounds and given no-one a target to aim at I wonder if everyone would still be alive. I failed the Wen’s as completely as I failed my own family

If there was one thing that that I would struggle to forgive my brother for it would be abandoning his principles to cold hard revenge, taken on innocent people. I wish he knew that and I wish he knew that I will never understand that.

Jiang Cheng to Wei Wuxian

I wish my brother understood what was happening in the cultivation world at that point and what kind of compelling lies were being spread.

I wish you understood you’d have been that target no matter what.

It was easy to look back after the second siege of the Burial Mounds, after the Guanyin Temple and see the lies for what they were.

In the time since Yunping I’ve had time to consider the issue of our golden core. I wish you’d never given it to me. I would have rather died then than allow you to do that for me. I wish the Wen’s had killed me sooner and you’d been given no chance.

I’d rip it out now and give it you back if the only person in the world who was capable of transferring it wasn’t gone.

How fucking dare you make that kind of decision for me, Wei Wuxian? I wish you knew how much I hated you for that, when the world thinks I should have been on my knees thanking you.

I would have rather died. I was ready to when I drew the Wen guards away from you on the street in Yiling. Why didn’t they just cut me down there? I knew that it would be death when they caught me. I fucking wish it had been, why did you have to save that empty broken husk I became? I didn’t want to be saved.

The correspondence had become more emotionally charged over time which was to be expected; both the letters Wei Wuxian had sent and received occasionally had traces of tear stains on them, but this latest showed Jiang Cheng had lost all ability to separate his emotions from the subject and he’d fallen into addressing Wei Wuxian directly instead of that imaginary third correspondent which had kept them both relatively safe.

It was probably the reason Jiang Cheng’s final revelation; the secret he’d held close to his heart for twenty years had finally come to the fore, because he’d let his emotions write the letter and not his brain.

And the truth, finally told, broke Wei Wuxian’s heart in two. He had thought there couldn’t be anything left in this world that was able to hurt him; he had been so wrong.

He wept long into the night, folded in Lan Wangji’s comforting embrace. For the first time it didn’t help, because all he could think about was that no one had been there to hold his brother when his world had collapsed around him.

Despite Wen Ning’s best intentions he’d been told about “their” golden core in anger and whether he’d deserved it or not it would have ripped him apart as viscerally as his own disclosure had to Wei Wuxian; yet there would have been no comforting arms or soft words to ease Jiang Cheng’s pain.

He knew himself what it was to be lonely and scared and bearing a huge weight of indebtedness to someone you knew you could never possibly pay back.

It was a long time before he could bear the thought of picking up a brush again to reply.

#untamed winter fest #day 30 #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #mdzs fanfic #mdzs fic #mdzs #the untamed #angst #feelings #shay's stuff

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lesdemonium · 5 years ago

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Okay so I know this is not your usual content but your tags about the end of frozen 2? I have been feeling frustrated about the cop out ending since I saw it and I really want the full version of that rant

oh my god anon bless you

Fair warning to anyone about to read this: I’m going spoilers-heavy into Frozen 2, which I feel should be obvious because I’m talking about the ending. It’s also extremely long. I put it under a cut to try to be mindful, but I also know Tumblr is a dumpster fire, so for that I am sorry.

Okay, so when I say that Frozen 2 had a cop-out ending, what I’m referring to is the complete and utter lack of consequences. The entire movie we’re building to Arendelle having growth and facing consequences for the actions of their colonization and attempt to strip the Northuldra of their resources. This build up includes Elsa sacrificing her life to “drown” in the River Ahtohallan in order to see the truth and, more importantly, show Anna the truth. This build up includes Olaf being another sacrifice that Elsa made, that also spurns Anna on to make the hard choice. The hard choice is destroying Arendelle in order to right the wrongs of her grandfather.

Only, none of that happens, and the build up is for nothing. Due to magical Deus Ex Machina (literally defined as “an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel.” which could not be more apt here), Elsa wakes up, jumps on a magical water horse, and saves Arendelle at the last second. Then, for good measure, recreates Olaf and, because “water has memory,” Olaf is exactly the same Olaf he was before, rather than Olaf the third or whatever.

From a storytelling perspective, this is cheap. Elsa and Anna’s sacrifices meant nothing. At the end, everything was tied up with a neat little bow, even though it didn’t make sense narratively-speaking for that to happen. And I do get it, from a capitalistic perspective. Elsa and Olaf carry this movie for the vast majority of their audience (even though, let’s be real, Kristoff stole the show in this one, and who wasn’t a little [a lot] into Anna being the smartest person in the room?). They can’t just “kill off” Elsa and Olaf. When writing this I was even thinking “Oh, but it would be interesting if the third movie was about them trying to save Elsa” but, honestly, that wouldn’t be a very long third movie and these characters are too much of a cash-cow for them to end a movie without them.

But by not destroying Arendelle, despite leading up to that for literally the entire movie (I mean, they evacuated the town in the first, like, 15 min! Come on!), the ending just feels cheap. There are no consequences to any of the actions, which makes it feel like they weren’t even sacrifices. “Oh, but the character’s didn’t know that, Zoe!” Dramatic irony only gets you so far; it shouldn’t be the basis of your entire plot and ruin re-viewing. Elsa’s sacrifice didn’t matter. Something magical swooped in and saved the day at the last second, which means she didn’t actually have to give up anything except a few hours. As a viewer, how am I supposed to trust a movie series after this? It’s the same reason why, after a while, the Marvel movies started feeling cheap and pointless: if no one is ever actually dead, then why should I care when they die? Where is the emotional payoff? They’re just going to come back, and maybe not even act like it happened.

From a child development standpoint, this becomes even worse. Movies are an extremely good way to practice emotions for kiddos. In movies, kids can practice seeing, feeling, and expressing any number of emotions, which if you’ve ever tried to explain emotions to kids, is very difficult (thank you, Inside Out, you revolutionized child therapy). And certain movies are better for this than others. For example, basically anything by Don Bluth is amazing. Movies that deal with heavy concepts such as death, abandonment, loneliness, grief, etc etc etc, but then have a happy ending are amazing for young children to watch and practice those feelings before they have to experience them at all (or to deal with what they already have experienced).

What I particularly like about Don Bluth films? The most devastating moments, they aren’t fixed. Littlefoot’s mom doesn’t come back to life. Charlie’s watch stops saving Anna Marie. But in all of those movies, they find happiness and peace, and it shows kids that even if bad things happen, things will be okay. Okay just has to look different now. That doesn’t mean it stops hurting, but the bad things that happened won’t feel as big for your entire life. Life will continue on and you will find new happiness and love.

Hell, that’s something we, as adults, need to be reminded of every once in a while.

Frozen 2 didn’t do this. Instead of finding a cathartic ending, they just fixed everything. But where, in real life, is a magic woman going to freeze over a flood to stop your city from being destroyed? “But, Zoe, this movie has a talking snowman, no one is looking at it looking for realism.” Five year olds are. For five year olds, fiction and reality do blur. They don’t want to just be like Elsa and Anna, they want to actually be them. This is not to say that kids are stupid--if you know me at all, you know that I think kids are some of the most brilliant confused little beings there are. They do the best with the information and the knowledge of the world they have. They know that talking snowmen aren’t real, but with young enough kids, when you read “The Old Woman Who Swallowed the Fly,” you have to say something like ��but not really” after every page so they don’t think she’ll actually die and become distressed part-way through the book. Literally. We read a Thanksgiving-version of this to preschoolers once and the teacher said “But not really” every time, so that the kids didn’t go home afraid of their Thanksgiving dinner because of a book they read at school.

It’s because of this difficulty with parsing fiction from reality that makes movies and other media so important for practicing emotions. For that hour and a half that they’re watching the movie, it is real, and parts of it will carry on into their everyday life (and I don’t just mean singing “Let It Go” for five hours straight, I mean little girls seeing a black woman in a wedding gown and thinking she’s literally the princess from one of their favorite books, and paying kindness forward with their joy).

So with that in mind, wouldn’t it have been more beneficial to show Arendelle being destroyed? And showing the fallout with that? And how this is really sad, and we’re all really scared, but thank goodness we have each other and everyone was already out of the city. Thank goodness we are able to rebuild and take this opportunity to right our past wrongs, bring back the people we lost, and replace all the material items that were destroyed, because we have the people that matter most to us. Things will always be different, but, to quote Olaf, “We’re calling this controlling what you can when things feel out of control.” Let’s focus on what we can control, so we feel less hopeless. That line made me think that Disney was actually going to go through with this. But instead, because everything was fixed in some unrealistic way, Olaf’s words feel just as cheap as Elsa’s “death.” There was no follow-through, there was no hope for the children who have survived a flood, who will survive a flood, or any other sort of disaster. I mean, hell, we’re in the middle of a global pandemic. As a child educator, I would have loved to be able to point at Frozen 2 and go “You know how Arendelle was destroyed and everyone was really sad and scared for the future? But it was okay, because they still had the people they loved around them? That’s what this quarantine is like. Things are going to be different, and that’s really scary, but we will be okay, just like Anna and Elsa and Olaf are.”

And, honestly, I didn’t hate the movie. I did hate Frozen 1, but I think this movie did have a lot of strengths. But the ending was not, at all, one of them. They were building up to a really cathartic ending, and instead they cheated their viewers. Not to get too nebulous, because this is a related but technically different discussion, but helicopter parents are detrimental to kids for the same reason. If we spend all of our time trying to condescend to children that everything is wonderful and perfect all the time, nothing bad happens, and negative emotions are bad, then we are creating is kids that do not trust us (because they know better) and are ill-prepared for when bad things do happen in their lives.

#frozen #frozen 2 #please don't kill me #i still enjoyed the movie #i just think the ending was bad #hope this was what you were looking for anon!!#Anonymous

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grimelords · 5 years ago

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My August playlist is finished and while it does unfortunately begin with Tool it also has two of Elvis’ gospel songs on it so please believe me when I say it takes a turn! Everything you could ever want over three hours of music from 70s christian hippie cult music to a funky remix of Also Sprach Zarathustra to Ante Up.

If you’re interested in getting these emailed to you instead of having them mysteriously appear and clog up your dash, I’ve started a tinyletter you can subscrine to at tinyletter.com/grimelords

but in the meantime,

listen here

Lateralus - Tool: Tool is on streaming now and they've got a new album out and so it's a very nice time to reinterrogate a band that meant a lot to teenaged me that i have almost completely exorcised from my life since. What's interesting firstly is how much better it is to consume their music digitally than it ever was in any physical format. They apparently resisted making it available for so long for nebulous reasons of artistic control and intention, wanting a say in how their music is listened to - they design these long and overwrought albums to be experienced as a whole. My contention is that as a whole album, start-to-finish, is one of the worst ways to listen to this band. Tool have maybe 12 great songs across four albums and every single album is around 70-80 minutes, pushing the limit of the CD. Which means for every great song there's at least two ambient interludes, Bill Hicks samples, 90s alt comedy bits (Die Eir Von Satan is just menacing music and a menacing voice reading out a weed cookie recipe in german, now that's what I call comedy) that really add nothing to the experience of the album on a casual listen. Being actually able to listen to these songs on their own, and playlist them and pull them apart from the mire is so refreshing and makes experiencing this extremely exhausting band actually pleasant for once. That's not to say ambient interludes and sketches and whatever aren't worth it, I absolutely love that shit and a lot of my favourite albums are absolutely chock full of that sort of thing - just like, don't make me do it every time. Their new album seems to reflect this at least a little bit, with the more overarching themes and arcs of the previous albums replaced by more singular and self-contained long songs interspersed with dedicated 2 minute interlude tracks. The runtime blows out to an hour and a half unrestrained by physical limits but it seems to contain more actual music and less funny than any other Tool album which is a welcome change. I'm still lukewarm on the album itself, it seems to just be a complete rehashing of the ideas on 10,000 Days (to the point of almost note-for-note repetition of some old riffs and themes) which is a bit disappointing considering how long they've apparently been working on it. I'll give it more time because Tool albums always unfold over multiple listens but for now they kind of just sound like the dad-rock version of a once extremely edgy 90s band - which I guess they are now so that makes sense. As for Lateralus, I think it's their best song. The perfect combination of Joe Rogan spirit science woo-woo sacred geometry fibonacci sequence 'open your mind' bullshit and good old fashioned riffs, it's the best of both halves of Tool and great starting point if you've never listened to this band and are interested in becoming insufferable.

Mars For The Rich - King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard: This album is so good and it's finally converted me to being a full time King Gizz guy so look out for a lot more of that in the future. It's a thrash metal concept album about ecological collapse forcing the rich to flee to mars and the poor to flee to venus where they lose their minds and fly into the fire. I spent a little while the other day obsessing over the insane vocal leap in this absolutely incredible song when he jumps down an 11th on 'mars for the riiiiiiich' somehow effortlessly.

Pattern Walks - Cloud Nothings: The interplay between Cloud Nothings second and third albums is something I think about a lot. Attack On Memory is a visceral experience of depression and living in your own head where Here And Nowhere Else is about being able to finally move past it, and living with it. There's a good quote from the singer on the Genius page for this song where he says "It was almost a response to “Wasted Days” on the last record. It ends with “I thought I would be more than this” over and over and this one ends with “I thought” over a beautiful bit of music which is an easy way to explain the way I was thinking when I was writing this record. I wasn’t as depressed as I was when I was making the last album. Before, I felt like nobody liked the band and I was doing it for three years. I was not in a good place. Now, I had more time to think about why I felt that way. It’s a positive song."

M.E. - Metz: Metz put out a B-sides and rarities album a couple of weeks ago and then they put out this Gary Numan cover on it's own for some reason. It's very very good! I love just putting a generally harder edge on it without taking anything away from the spirit of the original. I also, somehow, didn't realise that Where's Your Head At by Basement Jaxx was a Gary Numan sample until I heard this cover so we're all learning every day.

The Ocean And The Sun - The Sound Of Animals Fighting: Here's what's good: having the last third of your song just be a monotone voice reading from a CrimethInc anarchist zine over swirling guitar ambience. The drums are so good in this, Chris Tsagakis makes me want to muscle through the ska and listen to RX Bandits more, he’s just that good. The extremely crunchy part in the chorus especially, it switches through like three different distortions and sounds absolutely great. I’m a big fan of anyone that can make a very straightforward groove like the main one here really work just by absolutely leaning into it.

Uzbekistan - The Sound Of Animals Fighting: Uzbekistan is the most out-there and wild song on this album which was sort of mostly a way back into post-hardcore for TSOAF after Lover, The Lord Has Left Us.. which was perhaps a little too-out there for most. (seven minute closing track of a guy singing John Cage's Experimental Music essay over formless tabla and mandolin). The drums alone in this are worth it. The way they transition in and out of the super distorted electronic parts is so good. This song fortunately also has a section where someone recites poetry over electronic noise and a second voice whispers 'who holds your strings? wake up..." over the top near the end. I will love and defend dum-dum pretentious music until the day I die.

Gangsta - Tune-Yards: I love Tune-Yards and I'm incredibly interested in the way she interrogates whiteness. It's a complicated thing to get into in this playlist post but when she first turned up, a lot of people assumed she was african american just by the sound of her voice and music - it reaches and pulls from a lot of african music in a very postmodern sort of way and when people found out she was white, straight, cis and from New England it kind of felt like a betrayal for some people. On her 2018 album I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life she digs into it a lot in a way that becomes almost uncomfortable for what is ostensibly a pop album. An NPR article about it at the time said "Ever the student, the Smith-educated Garbus, who writes most of Tune-Yards' lyrics, designed an anti-racist curriculum for herself. She attended a six-month anti-racist workshop at the East Bay Meditation Center. She read the work of noted anti-racist educator Tim Wise and explored the activism of Standing Up for Racial Justice, a nationwide, progressive activism network dedicated to "moving white people to act as part of a multi-racial majority.". That's a lot. This song, Gangsta, from her 2011 album when all the hype was fresh feels like a pretty early look into the mindset she'd later fully fledge out of interrogating white identity and cultural appropriation while also participating in it. The lyrics are simple but they get to a simple point, "What's a boy to do if he'll never be a rasta?" is basically making the same point as Ras Trent by The Lonely Island except it's asking where else does Ras Trent fit? Can a white guy participate in anything like that in a way that's not cultural appropriation, and how can a culture like that participate in the larger world without being appropriated? It's 2013 tumblr discourse but it's still churning for a reason I suppose.

Ante Up (feat. Busta Rhymes, Teflon & Remi Martin) - M.O.P: An all time great Violence Song, in the same genre as Knuck If Ya Buck and X Gon Give It To Ya. Opening with "'this shit feel like a whole entire world collapsed" is such an insane way to open a song but the absolute whirlwind of threats that follows makes it feel warranted. "Fuck hip-hop, rip pockets, snatch jewels" is sooo good. I don't even care about this song I am just straight up robbing you. The absolute power in the rhythm of the overlapping getemGETEMgetem hitemHITEMhitem part is just so, so strong. It's like a VR experience of being fucking robbed.

Awake (feat. JPEGMAFIA) - Tkay Maidza: It seems like Tkay is finally nailing down her sound and she’s absolutely killing it. She’s been through a few different styles since she started out and now she’s really hit on something that’s very distinctly her with this and her other new song Flexin and I cannot wait for the album.

Big Head - Ms. Jade: Ms Jade had one album in 2002 and then basically disappeared which is a shame because she's got a very interesting approach. The star of the show is as usual, Timbaland. The man is a singular voice somehow making the tabla and a wikiwiki noise his signature sound. I love the drone of the raps interspersed with the vocal spikes and I love the chorus as the gospel vocals surge up from underneath. This whole song is just completely bizzare in its construction in a way that works perfectly and feels strangely.

Titanium 2 Step - Battles: Battles are finally back and I’m fucking bouncing off the walls. They’re a two piece now and it does not seem to have slowed them down at all which is very exciting. I can’t think of any band that has ever continued with only half of their original members and also moved forward radically every time. Everything about this song is great: the super strength drums, the hypercolour guitar and the vocals that are just screaming absolutely whatever you like whenever you like. It feels closest to Ice Cream, and Gloss Drop in general more than La Di Da Di but i’m so excited to see how the new album sounds - and how they adapt their old material live now that there’s only two of them.

Dancing Is The Best Revenge - !!!: I’ve never actively listened to !!! for no good reason, but plenty of times in my life I’ve heard a song playing and been like damn what the FUCK is THIS?! and it always turns out to be !!!. This is yet another example.

Skitzo Dancer (Justice Remix) - Scenario Rock: The first clap in this is one of the best sounds ever. Right after 'so you think you've seen and heard it all' everything drops out of the mix for this one very comedy clap and it makes me smile every time. The rhythm of the Disco!... Disco! Disco! part near the end is one of those things that's just always playing in the back of my mind, which as far as constant reminders go it's not the worst. I've also over the last week or so been a big fan of this 11 year old youtube video I found of some guy covering the bass on this song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0DLAUaV3f8

16:56 - Danger: Danger had a new album this year that I don't think I gave enough attention to because I relistened and it's very good. He spends the majority of it refining his original sound but it's such a distinct and original niche that it works out great. The songs are so densely layered and frankly just sound so beautiful! Which is a strange thing to say about 80s inspired electro but it just does. The strings and timpani in this about halfway through are just a gift as well, I love it.

Also Sprach Zarathustra - Deodato: As part of my ‘thinking about Elvis’ I was looking up a live album of his called Aloha From Hawaii Via Sattelite which has a very good cover which doubles as an illustration of how my proposed international peacekeeping satellite will function, projecting an immense Elvis themed blanket of darkness over ‘troublemaker’ regions to immerse them in an eternal freezing night until they’ve settled down. Anyway his entrance music for this this concert in Hawaii is Also Sprach Zarathustra, which is a very very funny thing to do and I think gives an appropriate measure of his status at the time. When I told my girlfriend about this she directed me to this bonkers jazz funk version of it by Deodato which deservingly won a grammy in 1974 for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.

Hollywood Forever Cemetary Sings - Father John Misty: I’ve resisted listening to Father John Misty for a long time because he just seems like a real asshole. A big brain man genius that saw what Lana Del Rey was doing and thought “what if.. me?”. But I can’t deny this song, it’s absolutely magical and as far as songs about fucking in a cemetery go it’s definitely one of the most singable.

Remember / Medicine Man - Yma Sumac: In reading about the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and who was buried there, I learned about Yma Sumac. Yma Sumac was a Peruvian soprano with one of the most incredible voices I've ever heard who was an absolutely huge deal in the 50s when Americans were clamouring for the exotic, real or imagined. She made extremely good mambo music and claimed to be descended from the last Incan emperor. Her popularity faded after the 50s and then for an unknown reson in 1971, ten years since her last album, she made this rock album. It is insane. It's the best example of 'voice as an instrument' that I've ever heard. She is making every kind of sound possible with a human voice and her range seems completely limitless. She's just as comfortable in a piercingly high whistle register as she is in deep guttural growls. About 2 minutes into Remember she just straight up jumps four octaves in a row just to flex. She also sings in a way in the second verse of Medicine Man that I've never heard before that sounds like she's blowing out her cheeks and then singing with her mouth almost closed. It's absolutey bizzare and I love it so much.

This Thing - King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard: Listening to the other album that King Gizzard put out this year is really making me appreciate how much of 180 Infest The Rats Nest was for them. This album is basically a Black Keys album of groovy fun songs about fishing for fishies with fantastic harmonica work and it makes it look even more like they just snapped when they did the next one.

The Warrior (feat. Patty Smyth) - Scandal: I've been very passively watching GLOW since the second half of season 2 and now I'm very passively watching season 3 and this song was the opening credits theme for the first episode. It fucking rocks I don't know why they don't just make it the theme song all the time. This sort of 80s hard-rock pop is very good when it's good and extremely bad when it's bad and I wonder if we'll ever see any sort of revival of it once 80s nostalgia nostalgia takes hold in 2030. Being a singer named Patty Smyth is very funny also. She's billed as a feature even though she was in the band because she left to try a solo career as soon as it was released, possibly even before. She is also John McEnroe's wife I just found out. What a life.

A Girl Called Johnny - The Waterboys: I found this song because I was googling to see if it's possibly to get a random album from spotify and instead foumd a guy on rateyourmusic who was generating random rym album pages and then listening to whatever came up if it was on spotify - which seems just as good. This was one of the albums he talked about and he seemed to like it so I listened and I did as well. Sometimes the best way to find new music is throw dice on the internet and see what comes up.

New Year's Eve - City Calm Down: The new City Calm Down is one hundred percent great and I have such admiration for them for making a complete left turn with their sound and sounding like a completely different band since their last album but being equally as great in both forms. It's very inspiring and it's also the second song of the month I've heard for the first time while walking around Richmond that's mentioned Richmond. Very spooky.

Cruel Summer - Taylor Swift: It's fucked up how good Lover is when ME! and You Need To Calm Down were so bad. It feels like they changed direction at the last minute and changed the tracklist dramatically because those two songs seem sort of wildly out of place, along with London Boy. It's so uneven it's basically two albums in one but when it's good it's extremely good. This song is fucking powerful. The way she straight up screams "he looks so pretty like a devil"? Amazing. What a crazy thing to shout. If you're interested I also resequenced Lover and took London Boy off it and it's a far better album in my opinion https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3LN1uAhp8BS8Ms4bgmHiVP

Kelly - Van She: I have no idea why but this is in the opening paragraph of Van She's wiki page: "Their label introduced them as a "new band from Sydney fresh on ideas, fresher than Flavor Flav, fresh like coriander, fresher than the Fresh Prince, fresher than fresh eggs."[2] Despite these claims, the band began with a sound very much rooted in the 1980s, heavy on synthesizer." which really makes me laugh. Van She had a very specific mid-2000s indietronica thing going that was really good as this song proves but they also did a bunch of remixes under the name Van She Tech that are very out there and completely different to the main band. Their remix of UFO by Sneaky Sound System I'm sure I've yelled about in these posts before, it's absolutely phenomenal. Anyway I guess what I'm saying is get you a band that can do both.

Shadow - Wild Nothing: Somehow I missed Wild Nothing back when they were a big thing and only listened to them this month. I listened to this whole album while I was doing housework and when it finished I though 'that was nice' and could not remember a single thing about it. That's the beauty of shoegaze! I had to listen to it about five more times for it to stick and now I'm getting more and more out of it every time, I love it.

Heaven's On Fire - The Radio Dept.: Years ago when I was having a major 'depressive episode' for about a fucking year I listened to this album Constantly and as a result for a very long time I couldn't listen to it without inviting megawatts of bad vibes back into my brain. Thankfully through hard work and time passing it appears I've fully healed my assosciations with this album which is fantastic news because it is delightful start to finish and worth getting obsessed with again.

Crystalised - The xx: It's nice to see news articles posted almost every day about which albums are turning ten years old. It makes me feel one million years old and viewing the world from a television in my hermit's cave. It feels hard to overstate just how much quiet influence the xx have had over the music landscape since 2009. Without The xx we don't have Royals and without Royals we don't have You Need To Calm Down, so. Something beautiful of theirs that I think is sad hasn't caught on in the intervening years is the idea of writing romantic duets when duets had been out of fashion for so long. They wrote a whole album of them and continue to! There's a beautiful contextual depth to it, in that it's two queer people singing not exactly to each other but with each other. In an interview they've called it 'singing past each other' which is a very nice way to put it.

Aspirin - Tropical Fuck Storm: I really appreciate the continual development of the guitars in Tropical Fuck Storm where they sound so pencil-necked and reedy in these angular little melodies and then sometimes explode into thick cacophanous howls, but what's especially good is in songs like this when they don't explode and instead just sort of sprout tendrils and crawl around each other. They're really drilling down on a very singular and very unsettling sound and I really love it. It is also a very interesting feeling to be walking around Richmond listening to this album for the first time and having him mention Richmond. Spooky even.

Pasta - Angie McMahon: "My bedroom is a disaster / my dog has got kidney failure" is an all-time great opening lyric for me. I love the way this song kicks up from the doldrums, like forcing yourself to do something just so you've done something today. Angie McMahon is so great and I'm getting more and more out of her album every time.

If I Had A Hammer - Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash: The way this song is performed here is so fucking cool. The guitar tone, June's voice and the general energy of it is just absolutely electric. It feels like Highway 61 Bob Dylan where it's still folk but it's got this massive power in it. The solo fucking rips in that very old fashioned way and when it finishes and that riff comes back in by itself it's just great.

Elvis Presley Blues - Gillian Welch: I was thinking about this song because I too was thinking about Elvis. I thought for a long time that the lyrics to this were ‘didn’t he die?’ and not ‘day that he died’ and I think I prefer mine more. Idly thinking about Elvis like “whatever happened to that guy? Must be old now. Wait, didn't he die? No way to know I suppose.”

Everything Is Free - Sylvan Esso: Rolling Stone had a very good article and interview about how this song about napster has had a resurgence and remained relevant through the streaming era which is a very good read. I love the original and really this version is very similar except for the one key difference where they really dig into the anger and frustration at the heart of it in the 'fucking sing it yourself' line. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/gillian-welch-everything-is-free-courtney-barnett-father-john-misty-725135/

It's Nice To Have A Friend - Taylor Swift: This is the strangest song on Lover and one of the best, I absolutely love it. It's a very old fashioned kind of Taylor Swift Love Story type song but it also has a a fucking trumpet reveille in the middle, so that really spices it up a bit. I also keep accidentally listening to this backwards - there's a few phrases like when she sings 'it's nice to have a friend' where the 'friend' lands on the offbeat but is accented like it should be ON the beat and because of the way the music is in this where it's just the steady pulse it's hard to tell whether the chime is supposed to be on the beat or on the offbeat. It feels like it sort of slides back and forth throughout the song depending on what everything else is doing around it. I don't know if that's intentional or not but it's a very interesting effect. This song is also, in my estimation, about a woman and is detailing a fantasy Taylor Swift is having where she can come out to the world with no fuss and enjoy a simple fairytale love story as a gay woman.

Psalm 42 / Chant For Pentecost - The Trees Community: I have a mental list of albums I google every few months to see if they've been added to streaming and by the grace of god one of them finally has been. Years ago I used to listen to this almost every night to fall asleep and I think it brainwashed me slightly in a delightful way, and now I finally have it back again! This is proper hippie music: a bunch of long haired new york christians who drove around the country in the early 70s in a school bus playing their elaborate and beautiful music for anyone who wanted to hear it. The multilayered, multi-movement construction of these songs is completely entrancing to me. It's not a hollow beauty, but one that brings new meaning to old words in the way they stretch and snap and waver throughout the song, moving past each other and through each other as it moves forward. I absolutey love it. Chant For Pentecost is a good illustration of the other side of them, a short song that starts sweet and turns almost maniacal. There's a wild-eyed feeling to the harmonies and the way this melody sits on a single tone for such long stretches before the frankly scary conclusion.

In My Father's House / Working On The Building - Elvis Presley: The backing vocals in these, and especially the bass vocals are so incredible. The way they work in the second verse of Working On The Building is so great, Elvis is the lead vocal but the middle harmony and somehow it just works perfectly. The harmonies is In My Father's House are amazing. The bass solo is mind blowing and the part about halfway through where Elvis swallows the mic and says "jesus died upon the cross [VRRMER] sorrow" is very funny. It's got it all.

The Greatest - Lana Del Rey: Norman Fucking Rockwell is an absolute masterpiece and this is the best song on it. Lana has always had a knack for this apocalyptic feeling but this is a whole other level. https://www.stereogum.com/2056565/lana-del-rey-norman-fucking-rockwell-review/franchises/premature-evaluation/ The Stereogum writeup for this album was really great, and really nailed my opinion of her whole character thing as well, but he described this song as her version of that video that Ted Turner commissioned for CNN to play at the end of the world and it's really a perfect description. The part at the end where she says 'Kanye West is blonde and gone' is so chilling to me. Like Kanye losing the plot makes sense because he's only a few months ahead of the rest of us. He’s been a thought and culture leader for so long and it only makes sense that he’s spun off into space in these last days before it all wraps up.

listen here

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whitewolfbumble · 6 years ago

Text

The Promise (Bucky x Reader, One Shot)

Summary: Bucky had stood you up once before, promising never to do it again. But he was about to make another promise that was a far, far better one.

Pairings: Bucky x Reader

Word Count:��2k

Warnings: None! A lil angst that melts into pure, loving fluff!

A/N: This was a sweet idea that I couldn’t help but speed write! Get ready for the fluffy, wonderful feels! If you enjoy this, please reblog or like or send me a message or a combination of those!

(Also, I promise my next chapter for The Fallout is coming!! I just needed some happy fluff in my life lol).

MY MASTERLIST

You were furious with him.

You had been here at this cafe, twiddling your thumbs,slowly after the first five minutes alone, then increasingly faster. Once it hit minute forty you were practically hitting bone.

With a deep, frustrated sigh you rung your hands, tightening them into fists at your sides.

Bucky was late. And he was never late.

Only once had he made this mistake before and you had been practically beside yourself with agonizing worry.

You had remembered it so vividly like it wasn’t actually quite some time ago at the beginning of your relationship. It was that weird, nebulous time when you weren’t exactly newly dating but you weren’t sure how serious he thought it was either. You were completely head over heels in love, but didn’t want to scare away the Winter Soldier quite yet.

So when he had left on a mission, you had bit your tongue with an emphatic “I love you” on your lips, left unsaid as he flew away into a world of unknown danger.

And the next day when he was supposed to return, he didn’t.

Or the day after that.

Or the one after that.

You were practically in tears the entire time, wondering if an unsaid “I love you” would be on your lips forever, waiting for his return that would never come. Hold up in your room for days, on the last day you couldn’t take it, pacing and roaming the halls, unable to voice the screaming insanity of panic in your chest.

You thought he was dead. Thought he was bleeding out in some field or warehouse halfway around the world from you, riddled with bullets or stab wounds. You thought of a thousand then a million different ways in which he could be dead or hurting, all worse than the last.

But word came in that they were on their way back. Worse for wear, but alive.

Eventually, he rolled in, moving slowly and covered with dirt and specks of blood. You had thrown yourself at him in a bracing hug. Your immediate instinct was to hold up your weary soldier but the moment his body was pressed into yours, you melted. You wanted to be his strength in such a fatigued moment, but you ended up need him to hold you up. Your despair had wrecked your body and soul and the sudden relief at seeing him opened up the floodgate for you to finally break down into him.

He had held you with his metal arm curled around you, keeping you upright and close to him. Neither of you noticed the team walking by, leaving you two alone in the hall. You had eyes for each other only. He was silent but into his chest you choked and sputtered and tried to voice three days worth of feelings. But in your sudden emotional rush you again couldn’t voice your feelings of love through your gushing tears.

You felt his fingers brush lightly against your cheek as your tearful eyes met his deep blue ones.

“I love you, Y/N.” he whispered, his low and tired growl sounding like velvet. It was his first words to you in days, and you couldn’t have possibly imagined anything sounded better.

It caught your breath in your throat and you couldn’t respond, only setting your lips feverishly to his, feeling the wet and sweet taste of his lips on yours.

You had pulled away, shaking both with an overwhelming joy and emotional overload.

“I love you too.” you whispered back, lips so close to his you could feel the light touch of them on yours, before pulling back and looking him dead in the eyes. “And if you ever stand me up again, I’ll make you sorry. I promise you.”

He smiled, hand pulling slowly through your hair and reeling you in closer, speaking a promise into your lips. “Yes, ma’am. I promise, never again.”

Since then not once had he ever been late, and vowed he never would be (not without forewarning) again. That is until today.

It brought you right back to those three days in purgatory, imagining you were on the edge of a hell you would never escape.

Had he been pulled away quickly on another mission? It wasn’t completely unheard of, but he always let you know. Had he gotten hurt somehow? Despite being the best at what he does he was always bruised or cut up somehow. Had his phone died? If that was the reason for all this furious waiting you really would try and kill him.

After twenty more minutes you were just about done, at this point standing and leaning against the wall by your table. The cafe was surprisingly dead for this time of day you noted, with not one person coming in since you had arrived at the empty shop. The barista was at the back, only a little bell out on the counter should a patron need something.

You huffed darkly pushing off the wall and pacing the small pastry shop. You didn’t notice the gleaming, glazed pottery coffee cups for sale or local art hanging on the wall. You had your third latte in hand, taking intermittent sips more out of habit than enjoyment.

You and he had found this place some time ago by chance, Bucky insisting to try it out since it was named “Y/N’s Cafe”. It had been his favourite place since, though the coffee was a little on the weak side and the pastries just alright. But he loved it, and it had become yours and Bucky’s spots. It was out of the way, quiet, and a little piece of calm in your unusually intense world. Today the barista filled the little place with songs from your favourite album playing on repeat, though you barely registering it in your anger.

Your back was turned to the door when you heard that tell-tale twinkling chime of a bell. You didn’t need see that it was him; you knew it was already. Your brows pulled together, face set in a frown as you turned on your heels.

“Hey, love.” he said, walking up to you like he wasn’t an hour late and you hadn’t been thinking of a million and one deadly reasons why already.

“Hey love?” you said, pushing a hand against his chest with your eyes narrowed.

He gave way to your touch, eyebrows raised before pulling them down in confusion.

“What’s wrong?” Ugh, the fact that he didn’t even realize made another flash of heated anger rise in your chest.

“You better tell me you just stopped the world from ending, Barnes.”

You only used his last name when he was in trouble. That did not escape his notice.

“What?” he said, a little dumbfounded with his face scrunched.

“You made me a promise once that you would never stand me up again.” you said, fuming.

Understanding dawned, and he surprisingly (just to add fuel to your fire) didn’t seem to take it all too seriously.

“Sorry Y/N, I was... caught up in something.” he said, only barely answering. Not good enough.

“So? Tell me what happened. It better be good or I’ll be stuffing your metal arm somewhere painful.” you threatened.

“I don’t think now is a good time to tell you.” he said dryily, not reacting in anger to your own anger. That just made it worse.

“You damn well better! I was worried that you were dead, you jerk!”

“We’re in the middle of New York,” he scoffed, as if nothing bad ever happened here. “I wasn’t halfway across the world fighting enemies or something.”

That got him one over-exaggerated eye-roll as you clunked down your coffee cup and put a hand on your hip.

“Okay, literally, not a couple years ago an alien invasion happened here so that excuse really doesn’t work.” The fool.

“Listen,” he sighed. “Can we just start this over, I’ve been late once, I don’t think that’s cause for a break down here.”

“Well, I’m not the one whose life revolves around fighting evil people, Bucky. Excuse me for loving you so damn much that I worry. You didn’t even call! You could have just sent a quick message to me, but apparently, I don’t mean that much to you.”

Okay, yes, you were over-reacting. And yes, he probably didn’t deserve all of this for legitimately being only one piddly hour late. But whatever, at this moment you didn’t care.

He sighed stepping back with a half-eye roll. Oh, that got you fuming. But as you opened your mouth to start shouting at him all over again, you cut yourself short as he reached into his back pocket, pulling out a small package.

“If it's that important to know, I was picking up this,” he started slowly holding out the small little white paper covered box in his palm. “And lost track of time. That’s why I’m late.”

“What is it?” you snapped, crossing your arms, refusing to give in and take it, like a stubborn child.

Another eye roll as his lips pulled into a grim smirk. He gently unwrapped the paper, setting it down on a cafe table before showing you the equally uninteresting plain brown box underneath.

“I got it made especially for you, over in Brooklyn. I guess I didn’t realize how long it would take to get back here.”

He only response from you was silence.

Bucky sighed, looking at you hard right in the eyes, but still his smirk grew bigger. What was in that thing anyway? You wanted to know but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

“Please just take it.” he said exasperatingly, and you both stood there at a standstill.

Eventually you curiosity won out. You narrowed your eyes and took a step forward, plucking the box out of his hand and turning to the side. It was made of craft paper, the thin and delicately dyed box holding something equally light inside. You pulled open the box lid and it slid off easily. Tissue paper lay underneath, and gently you pulled open the paper to reveal its contents.

Staring at you was a gold ring. It had beautiful delicate etchings on the side with one beautifully gleaming diamond in the middle.

It was classic. It was perfect. It instantly drew up visions of your life with Bucky.

Oh god, it was an engagement ring.

You couldn’t form a single word as realization sunk in. This was an engagement ring. He was proposing. Suddenly the empty cafe made sense. And your favourite album playing on repeat. He had planned this.

And you had been the biggest dick in the entire world.

You couldn’t look at him, maybe out of embarrassment or maybe the ring was just too entrancing. You could picture him studying the ring at the Brooklyn shop, eyes shining as brightly as the diamond was now. He would’ve been thinking through this perfect proposal, planning out the details in his mind and getting too caught up in the moment to realize he was running late. If that was the reason for breaking his promise, you would certainly- happily- accept it.

You felt his arms snake around you, fingers drawing over your hips as flesh and metal pushed under your shirt to the skin below. He pulled you close to him, his nose at your temple as his stumbly chin gently moved against your cheek.

“So, will you?” he said, hushed in your ear. “Will you marry me, Y/N?”

Your heart was in your throat and stars in your eyes and you turned and looked up to him. Again, just like all time ago when he came home, you could barely speak. He smiled, looking down to place the cool metal ring around your finger. But you couldn’t look away from him.

“Yes, Bucky.” you choked, before pouncing on his lips.

Maybe it was the sudden one-eighty from anger to happiness or how lightheaded you were suddenly feeling, but you couldn’t keep from laughing and crying and kissing him all at once.

“I promise, loving you is a vow I will keep. Forever.” You reach up and held onto his face, your glimmering ring catching the light.

“You better, Barnes.” you said, the tears in your eyes not of worry or anger, but pure, loving joy.

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky fanfic #bucky fanfiction #oneshot #avengers #avengers fanfiction #bucky barnes fluff #fluff #proposal #bucky barnes proposal #bucky proposal #badwolfbumble

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seotipsandtricks-me · 6 years ago

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When people think about content and advertising campaigns they think of creative. In reality, great marketing is a blend of both creativity and data, so much so that we say that creativity starts with data. It helps frame your thinking on a problem and find out whether your content is going to connect with your audience, as well as how data can guide the content creation process. Data gives you context but it can also be the core of creative. Data really isn’t just about the numbers. While many creatives are a little wary — or downright skeptical — about data, it’s crucial for a business to encourage its marketing team and creatives to explore how data can provide inspiration, rather than limitations. When a business starts to understand its audience, all marketing efforts start to come together – it just involves a little thinking outside the box, but in the end, it’s worth it. The best way to engage and entertain an audience is through the age-old method of storytelling. Data helps to write that story – it unfolds the plot and builds a fact-based worldview with the potential to persuade your audience of anything. The relationship between data and creativity is an area that brands should always nurture – here’s how. The Way We Use Creativity Is Constantly Evolving In so many businesses, creativity is often shifted to one side. Creativity is what the creatives do — and they do it over there. But creativity now has a leading role in many business processes. It’s about speaking to customers in new and innovative ways — so marketing and data need to be treated like two equally important sides of the same coin. Data listens, and creativity speaks. McKinsey & Company have spent a lot of time and money studying the impact of creativity in the workplace — and for good reason too. They created an Award Creativity Score (ACS) to look at how different companies with different levels of creative thinking fared. Their findings were fascinating, but boiled down this: more creative companies have better results, more value, and much more growth. They found that including room for creativity in every step of the business process and engaging in more interdisciplinary and cross-department work can make a huge difference. In fact, in a huge survey of companies, they saw that in more creative companies, 67% had above-average organic revenue growth and 70% had an above-average total return to shareholders. How did they do it? Well, McKinsey found that it all starts with the right mindset. Inject creativity into the ethos of your company and watch the benefits roll in. This isn’t just some nebulous idea, it’s about how to spend resources in the right way – we’re talking time and money. Giving employees the time to brainstorm is one thing, but if you look at what the top firms are doing, you’ll see that they spend 2.5 times more on their marketing than their industry peers. So, putting your resources into the creative processes really pays off, especially when those creatives are armed with data. Good data analysis has the power to yield hidden gems from your data that challenge everything you thought you knew. Digging out these unexpected insights help creatives think about the world in ways they could not have imagined since it has the power to flip the truths they take for granted. This can give creatives a huge edge over their clan. More Information Is Never A Bad Thing Data comes with the bad reputation of making some creatives feel boxed in, but it’s about time we changed that narrative. The truth is, more information is never bad and it’s the foundation from which you can grow – as a person and as a business. And when it comes to the creative teams, learning about the customers they’re marketing to should be looked at as adding strength to the great work their doing. If you look at the top brands out there you’ll see that they are completely customer-oriented. They spend time learning as much as possible about their consumers and observe them in their own environment to gain insight and understand that can help in their digital marketing decisions. For example, it benefits your creative teams to know that your customers prefer sustainable companies or innovative thinking — because those values can be highlighted in your marketing campaigns. Yes, data isn’t always the sexiest topic in the world, but the truth is, it’s a great way to understand mindsets and habits. These findings should become fuel for creative thinking, rather than a limitation on it. There’s a reason that Cannes launched its Creative Data Lions category — the two go hand in hand. Categories Like Data Driven Targeting and Data Storytelling show just how linked the two can be when you let them. Strategy Is Inherently Creative If you’re talking about the merge of data and creativity, it would be naive to ignore skepticism towards data and the tension that can exist between strategies and creativity. While there may be a habitual wariness, brands need to be able to combat that and completely rewrite the dynamic. The most exciting projects often come out of cross-departmental work. In science, there’s a well-known phenomenon called “The Edge Effect”, which is when two different ecological areas meet — and right along the edge between the two is where the newest life is created and interesting things can flourish. But merging data with creativity doesn’t end with science. In fact, the movement has permeated art, where even Yo-Yo Ma is trying to recreate this phenomenon in music. And it can help you too, regardless of your industry. As McKinsey found, by getting your teams to work together, some exciting discoveries can be made when data and creativity come together. Look at how your teams can bond and understand each other. Remind them that strategy and data are essentially creative — they’re about new and innovative ways to understand the customer — which is exactly what marketing is trying to do. So have your teams focus on what they have in common — the customer — and build on from there. Creativity Is All About Creating Space, Fast McKinsey found that one of the main benefits generated by creativity was speed. Firms that scored highest in creativity were ahead of the competition in part because they moved faster — in fact, 74% said they had to make decisions fast at some points, compared to only 40% of less successful firms. Incorporating creativity in all the nooks and crannies of your business creates space for innovative thinking, on-the-spot decisions and everything that you need to keep your brand ahead of the curve. Data and creativity are two sides of the same coin – they’re simply two different kinds of problem-solving. A.I. is already doing creative things in basic ways, which means that it’s using data to be creative. Basically, throw enough intelligence at a technology and it can be creative. While data can seem scary to a creative, creativity can seem unapproachable to data experts. There’s nothing special about our brains as far as creativity is concerned. We’ll see it in A.I. systems as they become more intelligent in years to come, for the single reason that they consume so much data. That’s why no matter how creative you are, more information is always better. Data helps you listen to your customer and creatives help you speak to your customer. It’s the perfect marriage and there’s no reason to keep them apart. If you’d like to see how creative thinking and data can perform wonders for your brand, get in touch – we’d be happy to help. The post Creativity In A Data Driven Era appeared first on FOUND.

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readingontheedge · 6 years ago

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Title: Carbon Replacements

Author: Reily Garrett

Genre: Romantic Thriller

Publication Date: September 9th, 2018

Hosted by: Lady Amber’s PR

Blurb: The killer held a knife to her throat—the ultimate decision locked within a dark and deviant gaze.

Determined and dedicated, forensic pathologist Remie Tallin validates her talent by detailing a victim’s last moments of life. Returning to Portland signified her new beginning where a psychopathic stalker designates her a pawn in a seductive game of intrigue.

The lines between predator and prey blur in hunting a medical genius bent on resetting the laws of nature. Evidence has never failed to point Remie in the right direction, yet conflicting discoveries mock the legal system and defy the scientific arena for clarification.

Detective McAllister’s return from leave includes a new assignment along with a partner well versed in subtle sarcasm and innuendos. Discovering the new medical examiner unconscious at the scene of a grisly murder forces him to unite with his brothers against a world of chaos where reality shifts according to a psychopath’s desire.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40776871-carbon-replacements

Author Bio:

Reily is a West Coast girl transplanted to the opposite shore. When she’s not working with her dogs, you can find her curled up with a book or writing her next story. Past employment as an ICU nurse, private investigator, and work in the military police has given her countless experiences in a host of different environments to add a real world feel to her fiction.

Over time, and several careers, many incidents have flavored the plots of her stories. Man’s cruelty and ingenuity for torment and torture is boundless, not contained by an infinite imagination. Witnessing the after-effects of a teenager mugged at knifepoint for a pair of tennis shoes, or an elderly woman stabbed repeatedly with a screwdriver for no apparent reason, left an indelible impression that will forever haunt her subconscious. In counterpoint, she has observed a woman stop her vehicle in severe, snowy weather to offer her own winter coat to a stranger, a teenager wearing a threadbare hoodie. Life’s diversities are endless.

Though her kids are her life, writing is Reily’s life after. The one enjoyed after the kids are in bed or after they’re in school and the house is quiet. This is the time she kicks back with laptop and lapdog to give her imagination free rein.

In reading, take pleasure in a mental pause as you root for your favorite hero/heroine and bask in their accomplishments, then share your opinions of them over a coffee with your best friend (even if he’s four-legged). Life is short. Cherish your time.

Author Links:

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2GFyOAn

website: http://www.reilygarrett.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reilygarrett/

Reily blog http://bit.ly/22HIwrk

Twitter: https://twitter.com/reily_garrett

Newsletter: http://bit.ly/2oGbKeC

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/11126619.Reily_Garrett

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/reily-garrett

Buy Link:

Digital Velocity: https://amzn.to/2wwz8yO

Bound by Shadows: https://amzn.to/2C3PiEV

Inconclusive Evidence: https://amzn.to/2PSOHsA

Carbon Replacements: https://amzn.to/2NDUgJQ

Excerpt:

“Wendy, I’m t-tellin’ you, the man’s a serial killer. He has the body of a Greek God, but his mind is full of squirming maggots.” Gena stifled a sob with a shaking hand, her body wedging back against the driver’s door after twisting to face her roommate beside her. “He’s more depraved than any fucker we’ve ever crossed, and he’s going to find me.” Aftereffects of the adrenaline rush magnified tremors in her fingers and lips while increasingly shallow breaths expelled carbon dioxide faster than her body could produce it. No doubt, the by-products of dizziness, cramps, and weakness crept into her awareness. Fear-sweat on her forehead glistened from distant flashes of lightning.

“Hey, slow down. Take a deep breath. You’re new to this and easily spooked. Just because men are pigs doesn’t mean they’re murderers. Take the money he gave you and don’t see him again. Change your number. Lay low for a bit.” Wendy startled with the repetitive crash of thunder reverberating in the Honda’s dark and eerie confines. “Can I at least see what’s got your panties in a twist?” She reached for the black cloth covering her friend’s evidence only to be pushed away.

“Oh God, Wendy. I shouldn’t have dragged you and Remie out here tonight. The creep knows I’m a sophomore, but I didn’t tell him which college. I don’t want him to find either of you.”

“Shit, Gena. I may be a student, but I can take care of myself.” A note of uncertainty snaked through Wendy’s voice.

From the back seat, Remie contemplated the wind’s increasing fury, so like her own, sweeping, all encompassing, erratic. Parked along a deserted back road hours before dawn didn’t equate to a tranquil setting when listening to accusations of murder. I should’ve brought my dog. Buckeye would’ve waited in the SUV. She’d just moved back to Portland and lacked the normal discreet channels of investigation derived from time-developed working relationships. Not that I’ve figured out what the problem is yet.

Small raindrops pattering the passenger window progressed to a heavy deluge that silvered with the dashboard’s ambient light. It was a perfect night to snuggle under a blanket with a cup of cocoa and a scary book. Living the scenario brought the rancid taste of bile scalding Remie’s throat.

“Girls, you know I’m a doctor, not a cop, right? What happened to toning life down to live like normal human beings? No more adrenaline junkie. Gena, it’s not like you need the money for tuition. Jesus, if your parents knew what you were doing for thrills, it would kill them both.” Years of schooling in forensic pathology aged Remie decades in the eyes of college girls too naïve to avoid such foolish and dangerous behavior. More than ten years difference thrust her into the role of adopted mentor to the neighborhood wild child with crazy tattooed on her brain.

“Jesus. I’m so sorry, Remie. You spent a night in the hospital last week after wrecking your car. You don’t need this.” Unspoken recriminations gathered around Gena like a smoldering blanket, the flameless combustion withering her resolve.

“I’m fine. The few scrapes and bruises have already healed.”

“I figured a few tricks for kicks, no harm. It’s not like I don’t use condoms, and we’ve only done it a couple times.”

“The harm is that there are real nutjobs out there. Deranged people you do not want to meet. Trust me. I see the results of their work every day during necropsies. It’s what I do… remember?” Visions of Gena lying on a cold slab while an ME separated the upper part of her cranium to create a removable skullcap strengthened Remie’s determination to see the situation resolved.

“Roomie, what makes you think he was a killer? Did he threaten you? Did you see a gun?” Wendy laid a calming hand on her roommate’s arm. “Hell, everybody has guns these days. I’ve got a .357 stashed in my bedside table. Let some psycho come to my dorm looking for easy targets—he’ll get a hollow-point surprise.”

Gena, the cute little kid from the farm next door with wide hazel eyes and curly brown hair had grown up with a nose for trouble, yet usually lacked affiliation with high drama. With the start of the spring semester, the risky escapades should’ve ceased.

“While he was in the can, I picked the lock on his briefcase, thinking he was some kind of lawyer or something.” If not for the frightened gaze bouncing between the proof clenched in her fingers and the nebulous woods on either side of the lonely road, Gena could’ve been any college student recounting a dicey hazing ritual. The tone and pitch of her voice increased when she unfolded the fabric covering her stolen treasure. “I saw syringes full of something, along with empty containers, and these. I also found alcohol swabs and betadine solution. Who carries betadine in a briefcase?”

“You stole from a John? Are you crazy?” Wendy snatched the wooden box with a huff and a groan.

Detailing around the container’s top edge included an intricate inlay bearing a darker grain. Similar designs decorated urns. “You better hope we can return them before he notices they’re gone. Where did you hook up?”

Wendy slid the lid back on the six-by-six inch square. The smooth glide on concealed grooves further testament to the boosted prize’s value.

Shadows shielded the contents from Remie’s view.

Wendy’s high-pitched scream rendered the burgeoning storm to white noise, instinctual awareness hurling the box’s contents against the windshield. Their arc proved too fast to visually track. Two pink lumps, small and irregularly shaped, formed the basis for a new nightmare.

The rattle and thump of the container ended when it landed perched on the steering wheel, upside down.

“Fuck! What the hell are those?” First medical school, then forensic pathology, enlightened Remie to evil’s worst-case scenarios. Her mom once said that after indoctrination, nothing new would appear under the sun. Whoever created this mayhem transcended anything evolved from humanity’s convoluted gene pool.

A sudden gust of wind and rain blew in as the driver’s door flew open. Gena lurched forward and hunched away from the torrent of slashing storm riding the invading cool blast. Her descent into hell included a flash of silver and guttural laugh.

#science #fiction #fantasy #thriller #book blog #bookworm

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