#like when she went to beast island I literally said to myself ‘she’s going to be fucking running that place watch ��’

[rosicheeks]

as a fellow she-ra fan it makes me REALLY happy that you watch it too! it’s such a good show ugh and it’s so cute 🥺 10/10 i would love to cuddle and watch it with you and nerd out about it 🥺🤭💖

-🌸

[lubdubsworld]

Change of Heart ( Taehyungx OC)

Pairing : Taehyung x OC Werewolf AU!!

Genre : Romance, Explicit Content.

Warnings : None. ( Some mild violence but mostly off screen ) werewolf sex, ruts, knotting etc

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3/ Chapter 4

[ Summary :

Times are changing.

After years of being oppressed, werewolves are taking a stand against humans , demanding equal rights and fair treatment. Heading the movement is Kim Taehyung, the breathtaking heir to the Kim fortune and one of the few remaining Alpha werewolves in the country. His disdain for the human race is well known and well warranted. They killed his family after all…..

He wants to change the world , to put humans in their place but when his five year old daughter takes a shine to their very human neighbor , maybe he has to start with a change of heart , first.  ]

Chapter 5

I found myself breathing through my nose, woozy and incoherent as the doctor fussed over me. 

“This is looking pretty damn bad, Dr. Jeon...” He was muttering while Jungkook sat next to me gripping my hands. My throat went dry at the words, fear making my heart jackrabbit against my ribs. 

“The bullet’s hit pretty close to artery near the clavicle, she’s lost a whole lot of blood. “

“Seo Joon’s going to prison for this... “ Jungkook swore, stroking my palm as I tried to stay conscious. 

“Tell me I don’t have to stay in the hospital for a long time...” I begged, desperate. 

Jungkook rolled his eyes. 

“You got shot... It’s not a playground scrape, Mirae....” Jungkook sounded exhausted. 

I nodded.

“ Whats going on with my father? Seo Joon was pissed off about something with my father....” I said, remembering the reason the wolf had been so pissed in the first place. 

“We’ll talk about this later- You need to rest and-”

“Just tell me damn it!!” 

Jungkook sighed.

“Your father got called out for trying to sabotage the vaccine drive going on on the island and he played the whole, ‘ why would I sabotage something my daughter helped make...’ card on TV. It’s had an effect....” 

I swallowed.

“What do you mean by effect?”

Jungkook looked a little angry now. 

“Can’t we talk about this tomorrow...you’re bleeding and hurt ...you need to fucking rest...”

“What’s going on...?” I demanded. 

“The weres don’t want the vaccine anymore. They think...well they think you may have tampered with it....” He looked uncomfortable and I couldn’t comprehend what I’d just heard. 

I stared at him, my jaw going slack in shock. 

“I’m not.... I have nothing to do with the vaccine...that is so far above my paygrade..I’m a lab tech..... what even-” I was too outraged to even think clearly. 

“People don’t know that, Rae. All they know is that they have always associated your father with bringing harm to the were community and somehow his daughter is here working on something that has the potential to both hurt and heal.....”

I bit my lips.

“He’s not even my real father.” I choked out. 

Jungkook looked surprised at that. 

“What?”

“It’s true. He adopted me because he raped my mom and she fucking killed herself over it. I was eight years old at the time and the bastard did not want any loose ends...” The words came out , bitter and edged with anger but it was an old hurt. An old rage that had long faded into a blunt sort of ache. I had been so young. Too young to fully comprehend 

Jungkook looked completely stunned.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry....”

“He wanted me to marry one of his anti-were associates . That's literally all he raised me for. When I refused , he cut me off completely. I’ve literally been on my own for years now and my job is the only thing keeping me from dying on the  streets....”

I hissed when the nurse touched my shoulder , the physical agony of my shoulder somehow intensifying as the nurse moved to finish dressing the wound. I would have to wear a sling next but I couldn’t even fathom moving,   let alone sitting up for that ordeal. 

The nurse gave me a slight smile.

“Your ribs are bruised again , this time its going to take longer to heal because one of them actually has a hair line fracture.” 

Great. That explained the woozy breathlessness. 

“It doesn’t hurt much...” I said confused.

“That’s because you’re on enough drugs to fell a horse...I’m actually surprised you’re still conscious.” Jungkook shook his head. 

“It’s just the adrenaline...that and the fear of being fired.” I muttered. 

Jungkook laughed a little at that.

“Don’t worry about anything. Just rest for a while and we’ll talk tomorrow , yeah?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I woke up to fingers in my hair, soft and gentle. 

My eyes fluttered open and I felt my breath catch when I saw who it was.

“Yuggie ??” I croaked out, my brother’s face coming into focus as I blinked back exhaustion.

“Welcome to the land of the living...” He said softly, keeping his fingers on my hair, stroking the strands back gently.

“What..... how did you get here so soon?” I whispered.

“You’ve been out for forty hours, baby....” He laughed a little and I blinked, 

“I....I got hurt.” I whispered bleakly. My shoulder was still throbbing and the pain in my rib was now a bit more prominent. I took a deep shuddering breath. 

“I’m glad you’re here.... “ I whispered, lifting shaky hands to hold his face. 

“Dad called me. He wants you to come back home.” 

I felt my entire body going cold, hands going clammy at once. 

“That’s not going to happen.” I said sharply and Yugyeom looked worried.

“He’s really upset , Rae. Kim Taehyung winning the election was not a part of his plan and he’s desperate to try and cover his ass before he gets carted off to prison.” 

I blinked at that.

“what do you mean by prison?” 

“We can’t talk about this here. He’s not allowed on the island. None of his cohorts are. So he’s been trying to get you transferred to a hospital in Seoul. Jeongguk was the one who called me. They’re holding off on the transfer but ....you know how dad gets.” 

I felt my head pound . 

“What does he want me for?” I whispered in disbelief. 

“I’m not sure. But I think you should at least go see him and find out what it is that he wants.”

I shook my head .

“I’m not going anywhere near him, I’m-”

The door swung open and I found myself jerking in surprise, the movement jostling my ribs and making me wince. I felt my eyes widen when I saw who it was, fingers scrambling to grab Yugyeom . 

“Dad...” He whispered, sounding terrified and I felt that familiar jolt of sickening fear . 

“There she is.... my precious little one.” My father’s eyes held no emotion as he stared at me, lips curled in a perfect smile. He looked so much like a good guy that it was nauseating. 

I took a deep shuddering breath. 

“the management here is terrible. I had to petition the fucking courts to get a permit to visit my own daughter.” He shook his head as he made his way over and I lurched away instinctively. 

“I’m taking you home now. Bout time you came back to me.” He smiled, chillingly and I shook my head. 

“No...thats not going to happen. I’m an adult, you cannot force me to...” 

“You are my daughter. And you will be my daughter till you live. Cha Eun woo is still single. He’s looking for a wife and you were promised to him a long, long time ago. “ 

“Dad.... she’s fucking hurt...she got shot like three days ago can you not do this right now...” Yugyeon had stood up, reaching out to actually shove my father away and he looked surprised for a second. 

He gave Yugyeom a glare but my brother didn’t back down, towering over my father easily. 

“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to sound insensitive but it just worries me that my only daughter is choosing to stay in an island full of beasts and getting mauled quite often . Isn’t this the second time you got attacked in that same cabin, by wolves?” 

“that doesn’t mean you can just offer me as a gift to one of your buddies.” I hissed. 

“He’s one of the richest men in Seoul....you should be on your knees thanking me for letting you so much as breathe near him.”

“Isn’t he a werewolf?” Yugyeom frowned in confusion. 

My father shrugged.

“I’ve since learned that your sister has a preference for them. Well if she’s going to spread her legs for an animal, better an animal I happen to hold the leash to....” He stared down at me with calculated cruelty. 

The crude words made nausea rise up in my throat and I almost dry heaved. 

“You’re not pimping me out to serve your own selfish purposes.” I shook my head. 

“He’s here. Outside. He’s going to stay here and he’s going to bring you back to his apartment in Seoul and you’re going to stay there with him. End of discussion. Yeom, I want you to come back to Seoul with me now. “

Yugyeom looked torn as he stared at me and I bit my lips. Yugyeom was still a kid, still in college. He couldn’t afford to antagonize my father.

“I’ll be fine. Go ahead.” I smiled. 

“I’ll send Eun Woo in.... “ My father nodded at me and then sighed. “ contrary to what you think, I don’t want you to hurt. I’m offering you a good life. Marry the fellow and spend your days lounging around in luxury. Thats hardly a punishment now, is it?” 

I turned my head away in disgust. 

Less than two minutes after he left, I felt a hand on my arm and I jolted.

“Mi Rae ssi.... I’m Eun Woo.” 

I glared at the man in front of me, barely looking at him. 

“I have no interest in being your wife.”

He looked bored at my outburst.

“I have no interest in indulging your  interests.  Your father is paying me handsomely to take you off his hands and that's all I’m doing. If you happen to be good at taking my knot, that's just gonna be a pleasurable bonus?” He pressed a thumb to my lips, stroking the skin in an almost gentle caress.  . 

A knock on the door made him pull away and I glanced up, relief flooding me when I saw it was Jungkook. 

“She’s going to have to rest now, Mr. Cha. Her father told me that he’s arranging her transfer to Seoul but that's going to have to wait for tomorrow at least. “ He was staring at the beta with narrowed eyes and Eun Woo bowed lightly. 

He shot me one leering glance before walking out casually.

“So...fiancee huh? You’ve been holding out on me...” Jungkook whispered thoughtfully and I flinched.

“Didn’t know he existed till five minutes ago..” I muttered. 

“Are you in trouble, Rae?” Jungkook looked worried and I hesitated, before shaking my head. 

“I’ll be fine. I can handle him. I just hate the thought of having to leave the preserve... even if its temporary. But I don’t want to annoy my dad right now... He’s... He can be irrational and i don’t want him to take it out on the Preserve and do something harmful to the research program itself , just to be petty.”

It was exactly the kind of thing he would do, too. My shoulder still had a lot of healing to do and it was unlikely that Cha Eun Woo would actually hurt me , at least till i got better. My dad, for all his anger was still rabidly protective of what he considered his. And i was definitely high on that list. 

“So you’re going then?” 

I caught the hint of disappointment in Jungkook’s tone.

“Aww....is my poor Jungkookie gonna miss me? If I weren’t sporting a broken rib and a messed up shoulder, I’d definitely, at least give you a handjob…” I waggled my eyebrows. 

Predictably, his eyes went wide , lips tinged fire engine red in a second. 

“Wha- Shut the fuck up, noona” He whined and I laughed. 

And then I sobered up when he sat next to me, linking his fingers with mine .

“I’m serious, Jungkook. I’m gonna be just fine. My dad’s upto something. If I stick close, I can at least figure out what he’s planning. I don’t want him to hurt you guys.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Right little firecracker his daughter is. So fucking pretty and man, those lips. I’d like to take a drink from that....” Cha Eun Woo gripped the shot glass hard, throwing back the whiskey with practiced ease. 

Taehyung struggled to keep his features neutral. 

“ Yoon Jae hyun’s daughter? From the preserve?” He had meant to sound casual but he sounded like he was being strangled. 

Eun Woo hummed.

“ Yeah....Her name is... Mirin....no wait ? Lirae? Mirae? ….. whatever. Poor thing. Apparently she has a tendency to get mauled by wolves too often. She was in bad shape when i saw her. “ 

Taehyung felt his heart lurch at that. He had wanted nothing more than to sink his jaws into Seo Joon’s throat, when he’d heard what had happened. If it weren’t for his abysmally packed schedule he would have rushed there as soon as he could. 

 As it was he had talked to a few of his acquaintances who were in prison. Seo Joon was going to go to prison and he wasn’t going to be coming out alive. 

“So, she just.,...agreed to marry you then?” 

“Not like she had a choice. The old man is going senile. Dude really thinks he stands a chance with his whole Reform Camps proposition. Wants to put weres in concentration camps.... What the fuck, are we in the middle ages..? He also thinks that betas are naturally resentful of Alphas or some shit. Kept feeding me crap about how you alphas want to subjugate the rest of us. Of course the fucker’s feeding into my Hotels and resorts so i just nodded along and agreed to his shit. Next thing I know he’s offering me his daughter in return to me being an ally in his campaign.. Figured I’d agree. See if i could get some inside dirt on him. I know you’ve been trying to bring him down for years, Tae...” Eun Woo gave him a reassuring smile. 

Taehyung felt a jolt of pride for the beta. Cha Eun woo had been a close friend of his from childhood and he knew he would never betray their kind. He had worked hard to earn his position as one of the biggest tech moguls in the country and he stayed true to his roots. Taehyung liked Eun Woo.

Admired him even....

But the idea of him touching Mirae.....

His claws nearly popped out at the mere thought of it. 

“And well if I get to fuck a nice little human bitch in the process, so be it right Taeh- Fuck!! “ Eun Woo jumped when Taehyung’s claw popped right out, shattering the beer mug in his hand and spraying both of them with the frothy liquid.

“Fuck...” Taehyung groaned and to his utter horror his fangs had dropped as well, his words slurring around the lengthened canines and he felt embarrassment flood his face. . When was the last time he’d popped a fanger in the middle of a fucking conversation....not since he’d been through puberty.

“Uh...you okay, pal?” Eun Woo looked worried now, beta eyes flashing green as he stared at him and Taehyung waved him off. 

“Be uh... Be careful with the daughter.” He muttered , trying to sound nonchalant. 

Eun Woo just waved him off. 

“Whatever , I know the type Tae. Likes a good, feral fuck from a wolf that knows how to give it to her good, you know?. Could smell her all over the alpha doctor who works there... Jungkook was it? Yeah... Girl gets around a lot, i could tell. And you can just tell that she’s going to be so fucking tight when you knot her you know, i mean human bitches always are but those hips just look like they-” Eun Woo stopped, stunned when Taehyung suddenly shoved the table away from him, hard. The older gripped the table and stood up on shaky limbs. 

“ I need to get going...” Taehyung fought the urge to shift, his wolf warring inside him, snarling at him to shift and leap across the table and devour the man across from them. To lock his fangs on the beta’s throat and rip his jugular out. 

 He’s threatening our mate...... He’s talking about what is ours....

The voice in his head was so clear and concise that he nearly blacked out at the very force of it. 

Eun Woo was saying something behind him but Taehyung was moving swiftly , stumbling to the bar where Jimin was taking one of the shifts.

“I need to go home...” Taehyung choked out. “ Call....fuck... Call my chauffeur.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Pre rut symptoms....are you fucking serious...?” Taehyung growled at the doctor taking his vitals. the man, long used to Taehyung’s intimidatingly deep voice, merely hummed. The man had been one of his father’s dearest friends. And one of Taehyung’s most trusted confidantes. 

“You’re body believes you mate is around. A mate you haven’t yet claimed. It’s reacting to it.” 

Next to him Ji hyun was looking disturbingly excited.

“It’s not you.” Taehyung snapped at the tall woman who recoiled in shock. Taehyung felt momentarily bad but the truth was he had been trying to break up with Ji hyun for a month now. The model was just so shamelessly clingy it was getting to him. and he most certainly did not want her around if he was going into rut. 

What he wanted was a luscious, chestnut-haired human with ebony eyes and a scent like heaven. 

Fuck... he was burning up and his skin felt like it was stretched thin. 

“You need to leave Ji hyun. I want to talk to the doctor alone.” He demanded and the were bowed, moving out of the room quickly. Taehyung turned back to the doctor. 

“So what do I do?” He demanded. “ I don’t.... my mate died two years ago. “

The doctor sighed.

“She was not your mate. I told you that already. She tricked you. She was wearing your mate’s scent but it wasn’t hers...” The doctor shook his head. 

Taehyung growled. 

“I fucking know that..... And I’m gonna fucking bury Yoon Jae hyun into the ground for what he did to me..... But I need to have my senses about me if I want to do that...Him and his entire drug cartel is coming down.....But. That's not gonna happen if i go into fucking rut  now.. so close to me taking over office. So tell me how to fix this. “ 

“Who is the girl?” The doctor said casually. 

“What?”

“the girl who smells like your wife. Like your mate. Who is she?”

Taehyung sighed. 

“Its Yoon Jae hyun’s daughter.” He muttered. 

Dr. Lee’s eyebrows shot straight up to his hairline. 

“Oh no... do you think he .... again?” 

Taehyung shook his head. He had distanced himself entirely from Mirae just to make sure he wasn’t being pulled into another fucking trap. But so far , from what he learned, the drug did not work on humans. There was no way a human’s scent could be manipulated to fool his wolf.

And that meant that it wasn’t a trap at all. 

His wolf really did find a mate in a fucking human of all things. 

God, he couldn’t believe the sheer irony of this. 

“it doesn’t work on humans. It is her scent. She’s... She’s the one I want.... “ He groaned. 

The doctor chuckled.

“ You mean, she’s the one your wolf wants?” 

Taehyung frowned.

“Isn’t that what i said?” 

“No, you said she’s the one you want and it makes me wonder.....do you perhaps....care for the girl?” 

Taehyung shook his head swiftly.

“I barely know her...she...she used to look after Luna. “ He finished. 

“Luna...? Interesting. “ The man’s words carried a hint of amusement and Taehyung felt his hackles rise. 

“ What does that tone mean?” 

“I’m just saying.... You don’t let people watch Luna that easily. You’re fiercely protective of your daughter. If you let this girl watch her, you must trust her at least.” 

Taehyung sighed. 

“I.. of course i trust her …. she’s a good girl.  A good....person...” 

“ I would suggest spending your rut with her. Claiming her if she’s interested. With you being you, I doubt she’s going to refuse.” The older man’s eyes fairly twinkled, 

“I’m not knotting her when I’m on my fucking rut …” He snapped. “ I’ll likely break her in two. “ 

The doctor chuckled. 

“It wouldn’t be a very pleasant experience for her, yes. But ….there's no reason why you can’t make it enjoyable for her. “ His tone turned gentle and more serious. “ Listen to me Taehyung-ah...… There is a reason wolves mate for life. We are not meant to be alone. If your wolf has found a mate, he’s not going to let you function till you claim her. That's just the way our body’s are built. You need to talk to her. Make some sort of arrangement. You have three weeks at the most before your rut hits and trust me you don’t want to be alone when that happens. “ 

Taehyung felt his insides churn at the prospect. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“No fucking shit.... You couldn’t have just told me that instead of letting me mouth off about her like that ? “ Eun Woo groaned , watching Taehyung with guilty eyes. 

Taehyung brushed him off. 

“It’s fine. I just.... can you just...keep her at your place till she gets better. I’m ...not in a good headspace right now and i don’t want to hurt her. she needs to recover.”

Eun Woo nodded.

“The doctor says three weeks and she’ll be fine. I’m a bit busy myself so I’ll just arrange for her brother to pick her up. Her dad’s busy meeting some suppliers. I sent the details to your men.... Did they get it?” 

Taehyung nodded. 

“The guy’s a bigger idiot than i thought. He’s actually met a few of these dealers himself. We just need one of them to ID him and he’s going to get locked up for life.” 

Eun Woo nodded.

“Everything by the book, Tae. We stick to the laws....no  bloodshed without cause and no one gets hurt. He likes to hide behind the fucking law when he’s trying to destroy our entire species , we’re gonna use that same ;law to rail him to the ground .” 

Taehyung grinned. 

“ Not just on the ground, Eun Woo. I’m gonna be putting him six feet under.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The recovery from my shoulder was surprisingly easy compared to the bruise on my ribs. Movement was difficult and it definitely hurt but my pain threshold had definitely gone up. It helped that Cha Eun Woo had stayed away from me and Yugyeom was on a three week break . We crashed out at his apartment and It was like being a kid again. 

We spent the days lounging by the indoor pool or playing video games. Yugyeom was a great cook and he liked cooking. 

Two and a half weeks after I had moved in, I was finally out of the sling. The physiotherapist visited me at the apartment and after making me move my hands well, she gave the go ahead to start my normal routine ahead. 

“I still want you to take it easy. Your ribs are healed and so is your shoulder but no roughhousing.... I’m only saying that because i know how it is i when siblings live together.” She smiled and I laughed, nodding. 

“I’ll make sure she’s resting well, noona.” Yugyeom said seriously. 

I closed the door as the doctor left, smiling as I watched Yugyeom trip over my sling on the couch, when the doorbell rang again.

Surprised , I turned back tot he door.

“ Did you forget something, Unnie-?” I froze in shock. 

Kim Taehyung stood leaning against the wall, looking like he had run all the way from his home across the city. 

“Taehyung-ssi?” I stammered out, taking in the untucked shirt, sweat drenched hair and flashing red eyes .

“I’m.... I fucked up.” He whispered, eyes fluttering shut. It took me a second to realize that he was falling and instinct made throw myself under him, holding my hands out to catch him. 

Pain shot straight up my shoulder as it took the entire brunt of his weight. The pain only lasted a second though, because Yugyeom was shoving me out of the way and grabbing the taller alpha by the waist.

“Holy shit....is this Kim Taehyung?” He looked awestruck as he stared at him and I felt my heart race. Taehyung seemed conscious but his breathing was raspy. 

I pressed my palm against his cheek and his eyes fluttered open .

“I’m... I need you.” Taehyung growled right at me. 

Yugyeom froze next to me and I felt my throat go dry. 

“I... sorry?” I squeaked out. 

“You...need you....under me... fuck...” 

“What the fuck, Rae?” Yugyeom hissed , face turning red as he tried to maneuver the alpha werewolf to the couch . 

I stayed frozen, having no idea what the fuck was going on.

Taehyung scrambled to a sitting position on the couch, gripping the cusions and he was paniting, his eyes wild as he stared right at me. 

“Mine.” His voice was ten times deeper than usual, fairly vibrating with power and Yugyeom went completely still. He was shaking as he reached for me, the terror evident in his face. 

“Oh, shit... Rae...is he....? Fuck , is he -” My little brother sounded terrified and I pulled him behind me. 

Taehyung’s eyes flashed red again and then they shifted to my brother. His gaze narrowed and his mouth opened. 

There was a split second when I knew exactly what was going to happen and I whirled around , grabbing Yugyeom and shoving him straight into the hallway leading to the front door.

“ YUGGIE, RUN!!!”  I screamed with all my might, and behind me Taehyung let out a vicious growl, pouncing across the room at my brother. Yugyeom managed to avoid him by a hairsbreadth and instinct made him move faster to the door but he stopped near the door looking terrified but torn. 

“ Rae...come with me,...come...” 

I stared at the alpha on the floor, my heart racing. 

Taehyung was clearly fighting against the wolf in him, trying to stay down, on his knees, fingers gripping the carpet to ground himself but the little growls that he let out told me that it was a fight he wasn’t winning. He looked up at me and there was so much pain and contrition in his gaze that I felt my heart break. 

“I’m...sorry...” Taehyung gasped out eyes fluttering shut. He was panting harder now, fingers clenched into fists around the carpet and voice ragged. i looked up at my baby brother and he looked so young and scared that I couldn’t stand it. 

“Its okay.... just go... I’ll be fine...he won’t hurt me... Just go...” I whispered desperately and Yugyeom shook his head.

“No... No... you’ve got to come with me... Rae...Noona....”

He never called me noona. I realized just how scared he was and tried to comfort him, but wary of going near him, lest Taehyung attack him again. 

“Yugyeom listen to me carefully. He’s on his rut. He’s not gonna hurt me, he just thinks I’m his mate. If you stay here he’s going to see you as a threat, so you need to leave..If I come with you he will hunt us down....I’ll be fine. I can take care of myself. You just need to go.” 

Yugyeom nodded, moving to the door and I turned back, feeling my stomach clench when Taehyung’s claws came out, tearing through our rug with ease. 

I heard the door shut behind me and I stayed perfectly still. 

Taehyung was still trembling and he finally looked up at me. Now that we were alone he was distinctly calmer. 

“I shouldn’t have come here.” He rasped out. 

I nodded. 

“So why did you?” I asked, staring at him as he stumbled to his feet. 

“You smell ....fuck you just smell like. ....like...”

“Like your wife, yes.” I muttered . “ So you want me to be stand in for your wife tonight?” 

Taehyung’s eyes shot up to stare at me. 

“My wife .... she worked for your father.” He choked out.

I straed at him, the blood running cold in my veins. 

“What?”

“Your father hired her.... to get rid of me. She... used a drug . A drug that confuses a wolf’s senses. Makes the wolf think he’s found his mate. Wolves cannot hurt or live without their mates. Its important to us.  She...She got pregnant on the night we mated and by the time I found out she was already carrying Luna and there was nothing I could do....I couldn’t...it wasn’t even a fucking bond.... I couldn’t sense her...couldn’t feel her...couldn’t muster any kind of affection for her but ... but she was carrying my baby and I just couldn’t bring myself to send her away......”

“Taehyung...” I whispered, remembering how Luna had talked about her father not liking her mother. 

“Its not natural for a wolf my age to be without a mate. But ....that scent ....I... I never picked up on it with anyone else till I... “ He sighed. 

“Till you met me.” 

“Till I met you.” 

I stared at the floor. 

“I’m not.... I’m not actually in rut yet. It’s still a day or so away. i didn’t want to come here but.... I’m supposed to be taking over the office in three days. When I do, I can finally use my position to bring your father down. He is using his drug dealers and suppliers to mess with our biology and its ...something sacred to us. Wolves mate for life and to make a wolf doubt his ability to choose his mate is the worst kind of sacrilege.....”

“What do you want me to do?”

He stared at me....

“If I go into rut and I don’t have.... my mate ...it’s going to fuck me up. I don’t wanna go into the gory details but I most certainly will not be able to take over the office. ” He laughed without mirth. 

There was nothing else to be said , was there?

“You have no right..... asking me to do this.....” I whispered , angry . 

“I know.... I know and if you say no, I will walk out this door and you will never see me again.” 

I laughed. 

“I think you came here because you knew. “

He didn’t respond.

“You fucking knew I wouldn’t be able to say no to you. “ 

His gaze was steady as he stared at me.

“I’ll take care of you.... I won’t...this isn’t a one night stand or a no strings attached thing, Rae..... You will be mine. I’ll be yours. “ 

“And yet, your eyes tell me that there is nothing you hate more, than standing here asking me to be your mate......” I said bitterly.

He didn’t deny it. 

“Will you come with me , then?”

I stared at his handsome face , the surreal beauty of it. And I thought of my father and how he wanted only to destroy anything that he didn’t understand. If Taehyung was going to bring my father down , I wasn’t going to be the thing that stopped him from doing it. 

“Let me get my clothes.” 

AUTHOR’S NOTE : IT WAS EASIER GIVING BIRTH THAN WRITING THIS FIC 

just kidding i love werewolf tae. Please let me know what you thought uwu

[dragoneyes618]

Ben didn't have official days off, but every so often he (and his mother) made himself ignore any pileups of work that may have been looming and relax. King of Auradon he may be, but he was also a teenage boy, and everyone needed some down time once in a while.

So now he was sitting in an armchair in one of the small, private sitting rooms that Belle referred to as her "hideaways." It was a small room, with comfortable chairs, beautiful curtains, and hanging lamps. And, of course, piles of books.

His mother was in her own chair across from him, reading. As he was himself. As even his father was, sitting near the door.

His mother was right, Ben mused. There was nothing quite like a good book.

Someone coughed.

Ben looked up.

A woman was standing by the doorway.

That in itself wasn't so unusual. There were many people who lived and worked in Beast Castle, after all, although this room was off-limits. But it wouldn't be the first time someone had snuck in, usually to read one of the books. Belle never punished anyone who did that-in fact, she always gave the perpetrator as many books as he or she wanted.

Ben vaguely recognized the woman as one of the new servants. He didn't know her name, though. He felt bad about that. He always did his best to know the names of all the workers in the castle. Their literal job was looking after his family; the least he could do in return was call them by their names. This woman, however, tended to avoid people, and so he hadn't learned her name yet.

She was elderly, with a lined face and hair that was almost completely white, with just a single strand of black running through it, tied up in a bun. She looked as though she could use a cane, although she wasn't leaning on one at the moment. She wore an old-fashioned dress, all black but with white lace.

Also, she was holding a pistol in her right hand. That was definitely unusual.

It too looked old-fashioned-the kind of pistol that had exactly six bullets, that you needed to manually reload and put in gunpowder each time you used that, that wouldn't work if it got wet, and that had an even chance of exploding when you fired.

Still, a gun was a gun. And she would only need three bullets to kill all of them, if she was so inclined.

"You-" the Beast sputtered. "How-Guards!"

Nothing happened.

"I'm afraid your guards are somewhat indisposed," the woman said, training her gun on the Beast. "They won't be coming to help you anytime soon."

"You didn't..." Belle whispered. Ben swallowed nervously; but they would have heard gunshots, right?

"Oh, they're all right," the woman said. "They're just a bit...tied up at the moment." She laughed. "I didn't do it myself, of course; my family still does have allies, you know. Even now."

"What do you want?" Ben asked.

Both his parents moved toward him, as though to shield him; but he was king. Surely dealing with dangerous assassins was his job?

The woman focused on him. Her face was lined not just with age, Ben realized, but with grief and stress. Her black eyes seemed to scorch into him.

"The boy king," she said musingly. "The one who overturned a generation of wrongs-or tried to, at least. Too late for most. But, as some say, better late than never." She sounded sarcastic.

"No one pays attention to the servants, do they?" she mused. "No one wondered who I was, or where I had come from. It was ridiculously easy getting a job here. I suppose you've gotten complacent, with all the villains on the Isle?" she sneered.

She looked at Ben. "What do I want? I want to have my say."

"Then-speak," Belle said. The longer this strange woman kept talking, the more time there would be for someone to find them, or discover the guards.

The intruder nodded at the Queen Mother. "My name is Madeline. Madeline de Vil. But you probably know me as Malevola."

Malevola de Vil.

"So you have heard of me," Malevola said with a wicked smile. "What do they say about me? That I was one of the greatest fashion designers of the last century? That I was the best owner of the House of De Vil in three generations? That I was a respected member of society? That I would do anything for my family?"

Her face darkened. "Or do they say that I, like all those bearing the de Vil name, are cursed? That I care more for fur than my family? That I am frightening, mad, evil, just like my daughter?"

Ben found his voice. "Cruella de Vil."

Malevola glared at him. "Don't call her that."

"But-that's her name."

"No, it is not," Malevola said, quietly, menacingly. The hand holding the pistol remained steady. "Do you really think that I would give my own daughter a name like Cruella?" She shook her head in disgust. "No. What runs in the de Vil family, particularly with the females, is that people-and by people I mean the general public, people who don't even know us-they give us nicknames.

"Not friendly, endearing nicknames. Perhaps nicknames isn't the right word. I don't know. I was ten when people started calling me Malevola. Ella was twelve when they called her Cruella. My own mother, her name was Dinitia, but do you know what people called her?" Malevola sneered, but in that sneer was anger and hurt at lifetimes-not just her, but many members of her own family-of mockingly being called the wrong name. Perhaps parody was the word she was looking for. Or travesty. "They called her Dementia. You think my daughter is cruel? At least she calls others by their proper names."

"They fear us, you see," Malevola went on. "And they scorn us. So they either name us to fit their beliefs about us, or they mock us, so that they can pretend we don't frighten them."

"I'm sorry," Belle started.

Malevola whirled on her. "You think I have finished?! I have barely even started!"

Taking a deep breath to compose herself, she continued. "You have done me, and many people, a great wrong." She sounded like she was trying to be formal, like she'd rehearsed this in her mind.

"What have we done?" the Beast asked.

And just like that, her composure was gone.

"What have you done?" she hissed, her knuckles white, her eyes wide. "What have you done? You take my children from me, and you ask what you have done?"

She laughed bitterly. "The enchantress who cursed you was right. You are a beast inside and out."

The Beast paled; that was his worst fear.

"First, you took my Ella," Malevola went on. "You took her, and you locked her up, and you said she was a danger and a menace to society and that we should be glad you were taking her away.                                                                          "For stealing dogs." Her voice shook. "Even young Anita said that the punishment didn't fit the crime. But no, you take her, you do not help her, and you send her away to an island full of murderers."

"She's a villain," the Beast tried to reason.

That was the wrong thing to say.

"She is my daughter!" Malevola screamed.

Ben suddenly understood why people feared the de Vil family. Malevola truly looked like her family's surname.

"And my son, Cecil, came to you," Malevola continued. Her voice was dangerously calm now. "And he begged you, lowering himself, a bearer of the de Vil name, for you. He asked you to help her, to be kind to her, to do something else-anything else-but you refused.                                                                    "Tell me, Beast, what is the line between villainy and insanity?"

The Beast did not answer.

"And with no other option left," Malevola continued, "my Cecil volunteered to go to your cursed Isle, to be with Ella, to help her, because he could not leave his sister alone. You agreed to that. And you sent both of my children to the Isle."

"Did you plan," Malevola wondered, "for there to be no communication from the Isle at all? Did you want us all to forget about them, to pretend the villains never existed?      

"I had no letters. My own were returned, marked Return to Sender. There were no phone calls. Nothing. The de Vil family has much influence, but I could do nothing.      

"Do you know what it is like, not to know if your own children are alive or dead? I would not wish that on my worst enemy."

She locked eyes with the Beast. "Twenty years I have waited for word of my children. For twenty years I have not known if they live, or if they were killed within days of arriving on the Isle. And now your son brings my grandson over..."

She sighed. "He looks like Ella. Cecil, too. He has the de Vil hair. All the de Vils, we look like each other. It is yet another reason people find us strange. But my grandson, he is frightened of me. We never knew each other. You took that from me, too. He fears I am too much like Ella, for he tells me that Ella has deteriorated..."

She could have been a hundred years old.

The Beast stepped forward. "If you are here to punish me, then-do so." Belle gasped, but he continued. "Do not make my wife and son pay for my crimes."

"You are brave," Malevola conceded. She looked almost surprised. "But no."

She looked at Ben. "I do thank you, you know. You brought my grandson off the Isle, and he brought me news of my family."

She looked back at the Beast, meeting his eyes directly. She did not speak for a long moment.

"You misunderstand me," Malevola–Madeline–said finally. "I am not here to kill you. I am here only to cause you the same pain you have caused me."

Moving swiftly, she turned, pointed the gun straight at Ben, and fired.

[agentrouka-blog]

Rhaego The Malformed

Okay, so we know Rhaego came out looking like this:

“Monstrous,” Mirri Maz Duur finished for him. The knight was a powerful man, yet Dany understood in that moment that the maegi was stronger, and crueler, and infinitely more dangerous. “Twisted. I drew him forth myself. He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like the wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of corruption. He had been dead for years.” (AGOT, Daenerys IX)

While the blood magic may have killed him (since he was alive and kicking in Dany’s womb and visibly grew), it’s likely, he always looked like this, because GRRM tells us it happened before. 

Maegor the Cruel did it twice.

ALYS OF HOUSE HARROWAY (…) She was the first woman to become pregnant by the king in the year 48 AC, but she lost the babe soon after. What was expelled from her womb was a monstrosity, eyeless and twisted, and in his fury Maegor blamed and executed her midwives, septas, and the Grand Maester Desmond. (…)

ELINOR OF HOUSE COSTAYNE (…)  She, too, became pregnant, and like Alys before her, she gave birth to a stillborn abomination said to have been born eyeless and with small wings. She survived that monstrous labor, however, and was one of the two wives who survived the king. 

(A World of Ice and Fire - The Targaryen Kings: Maegor I)

Considering these examples, Rhaego may even always have been destined to be stillborn, and it was only his unborn life that was traded. 

What would Drogo have done if he had remained uninjured and that prophecy Stallion baby had come out this way? Blind and malformed? Would Rhaego have even survived the day of his birth? Would Dany have?

This was never going to end well for Dany. And it’s not Mirri that doomed her, nor even Viserys. It’s the fact that she is the product of generations of rampant, abusive incest practices meant to preserve the dark blood magic that had been cooked up in ancient Valyria. That blood magic was always about power and oppression: fire and blood. Slavery and conquest. Destruction and death. And occasionally it would bite back in this way: the refusal of new life. 

The same source of Dany’s own power, her dragon blood, is the source of her doom. She literally never had a chance to create life out of her own body. With a different childhood, she could have found something else to fulfill her, but - again - her Targaryen family prevented that. Like the Lannisters they self-perpetuate their cruelty and abuse. On and on and on. 

It is so bitter. 

But at least now I’m even more certain that there won’t be another Targcest baby. Even if Jon has to debase himself with Dany, it would ultimately be fruitless. 

Mirri’s “prophecy” is smoke and mirrors in every sense, because, actually, Dany already rejected Drogo’s return herself. 

If she died here, Dany wondered, would the horse god of the Dothraki part the grass and claim her for his starry khalasar, so she might ride the nightlands beside her sun-and-stars? Or would the angry gods of Ghis send their harpies to seize her soul and drag her down to torment? 

(ADWD, Daenerys IX)

Followed by...

She called until her voice was hoarse … and Drogon came, snorting plumes of smoke. The grass bowed down before him. Dany leapt onto his back. She stank of blood and sweat and fear, but none of that mattered. "To go forward I must go back," she said. Her bare legs tightened around the dragon's neck. She kicked him, and Drogon threw himself into the sky. Her whip was gone, so she used her hands and feet and turned him north by east, the way the scout had gone. Drogon went willingly enough; perhaps he smelled the rider's fear.

In a dozen heartbeats they were past the Dothraki, as he galloped far below. To the right and left, Dany glimpsed places where the grass was burned and ashen. Drogon has come this way before, she realized. Like a chain of grey islands, the marks of his hunting dotted the green grass sea.

A vast herd of horses appeared below them. There were riders too, a score or more, but they turned and fled at the first sight of the dragon. The horses broke and ran when the shadow fell upon them, racing through the grass until their sides were white with foam, tearing the ground with their hooves … but as swift as they were, they could not fly. Soon one horse began to lag behind the others. The dragon descended on him, roaring, and all at once the poor beast was aflame, yet somehow he kept on running, screaming with every step, until Drogon landed on him and broke his back.

 (ADWD, Daenerys X)

She herself makes the choice. No horse gods, no starry khalasar, no sun-and-stars. The grass burns, the horses burn, the riders flee.

It was never about hinting at a future successful pregnancy, or even dying in childbirth. It was about rejecting Drogo’s return entirely. Dany doesn’t need Drogo. She traded him for her dragons. She has become Drogo, she has surpassed him. He will never return. 

No matter that Quentyn, the sun, rose in the west and set in the east. No matter than the Dothraki sea is going dry. Dany miscarries again. She can never have a living child. And she has already chosen the dragon. Again.

And when the bleak dawn broke over an empty horizon, Dany knew that he was truly lost to her. "When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," she said sadly. "When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When my womb quickens again, and I bear a living child. Then you will return, my sun-and-stars, and not before."

Never, the darkness cried, never never never.

Inside the tent Dany found a cushion, soft silk stuffed with feathers. She clutched it to her breasts as she walked back out to Drogo, to her sun-and-stars. If I look back I am lost. It hurt even to walk, and she wanted to sleep, to sleep and not to dream.

She knelt, kissed Drogo on the lips, and pressed the cushion down across his face. (AGOT, Daenerys IX)

Dany has embraced what her ancestors did to her: power, fire and blood. Bride of fire, daughter of death, mother of dragons. No life. No future. A kiss and a death. 

[yaboigamerghost]

Imperfection Is Beautiful: An Analysis of Hordak From Netflix’s She-Ra

       Before I start I’d like to preface this by saying that I’m normally not the kind of person who really becomes attached to the villains in the media I consume (Zuko from ATLA being an obvious exception). However, leading into She-Ra’s final season I found myself asking one question “Why do I care about what happens to Hordak?” In the back of my head while watching the final I was constantly wondering where he currently was, and was even more invested than I already was during scenes featuring him, during his reunion with Entrapta, and later when he turned on Horde Prime to save her I was cheering the whole time. While I still completely agree with those takes I had while watching, this made me decide to try and take a deep dive into why I and many other fans felt that way. Specifically, what did lead writer Josie Campbell, her team, and the rest of the staff do to turn a character once presented as likely being the shows final boss into a sympathetic and understandable one, and how did they turn Entrapdak, which was once and still partly is viewed as a crackship into one of the stronger presentations of the shows themes of love, and the power of friendship. My hope is that by the end of this essay people who are fans of Hordak’s character can understand better the possible reasons as to WHY they feel that way, and maybe try to explain to those who really don’t like him why so many people do. Now without further ado, let’s get analyzing.

         To begin, let me talk about how he’s used in the first season, and how the writers chose to position him in the viewers’ heads. For those who haven’t taken a marketing class before, positioning typically refers to how companies try to position their brand in comparison to other brands in the minds of consumers, and the same concept can be somewhat applied to how storytellers position their characters in regards to each other in the minds of their audience.With that out of the way how is Hordak positioned in the audience’s head during season 1? By the first time he appears on screen Adora has been established as the show's protagonist, her and Catra were friends who have went their separate ways in a tragic scene where Adora pleads for Catra to join her, and Shadow Weaver has been established as a uh… well a giant asshole. So by the time Shadow Weaver brings Catra to Hordak for judgement on not bringing Adora back we are already inclined to sympathize with Catra and likely already dislike Shadow Weaver, Hordak himself has been mentioned in passing but never really anything specific about him, so when we see him for the first time drenched in shadows with red eyes and teeth we’re likely expecting the worst for Catra, a character we probably are sympathetic to at this point in the story. However something interesting happens here, Hordak essentially sides with Catra in this scene. He makes Shadow Weaver promote her, and tells her to stop focusing on finding Adora. So while the show had to this point presented the idea that the endgame for the show is defeating the Horde, and Hordak being the assumed leader of the Horde… he’s still not presented as the character that’s the most hated based on his interactions with other characters. Throughout season 1 the basis of his screen time is telling Shadow Weaver to stop wasting resources trying to bring Adora back, and then at the end of the season assisting Catra’s plan to use the Black Garnet. Essentially every time Shadow Weaver tries to make a move against Adora and Catra; the characters we’re sympathetic towards; he tells her off on it and when she makes an open act of defiance against Catra's plan he throws her in prison. What all of these acts do to the audience is kind of present him as not being as bad as Shadow Weaver. Let me frame it this way. The character who at this point is thought to eventually be the final boss is not the most hated of the antagonists. To me that seems fairly telling, and retrospectively to kind of foreshadow the direction his character would eventually go.

Season 2 I would say is the most he’s ever played as a straight up villain. He’s patronizing to his subordinates and he uses intimidation tactics and light forms of torture on Catra which I think might be the biggest reasons as to why some fans of the show despise him even now. However, this is also the season where the most important relationship he has throughout the show starts to form. One of the scenes Entrapdak fans bring up a lot is when he catches her in his Sanctum (classy) working on the portal machine and he yells “Get out!” in what is pretty obviously somewhat a callback to Beauty and the Beast when you think about it. It’s what I’d call being subtle by throwing subtlety out the window. Sure it is a line from BatB but it’s also just something an angry person says to someone trespassing and considering at this point we know nothing about their relationship and we likely aren’t thinking that these two characters would have an arc together. What I’m basically saying is that while on multiple viewings this scene pretty obviously foreshadows them as part of a beauty/beast narrative, someone watching the show for the first time may not notice that during this scene. At the end of the day however season 2 Hordak is the most purely villainous he ever is during the show, he suffocates Catra in one of his contraptions as intimidation, he starts off disparaging all of Etheria to Entrapta in their initial conversation about portals, he plans to send Shadow Weaver to Beast Island (although the viewer may not care about this one), and if not for Entrapta convincing him otherwise he probably would have had Catra executed. Again, this season is him at his worst and at his most high and mighty. The way the insecure clone of Horde Prime WANTS to be seen, a façade that gets broken down in front of the audience for the rest of the series, in fact it partly gets broken down in this season during the scenes of him without his armor.

The way Season 3 chooses to frame Hordak actually starts in an episode in which he’s not present. During the season’s first episode Adora has a conversation with Bow and Glimmer after Shadow Weaver is found in Bright Moon. During this conversation she talks about how she changed for the better after having been in the Horde all her life, and she says she chooses to believe that if she can then maybe everyone can, even Shadow Weaver. Subconsciously many of us probably thought during this scene “Even Hordak?”. Essentially what this scene does is have the show’s protagonist make a case for not demonizing the show’s current antagonist like many would, it plants the idea that in the viewer’s head that maybe he isn’t too far gone. The previous season showed him growing to trust Entrapta enough to spare Catra because of her advising, which could be enough to show that to be true. While always rough around the edges and teeming with anger he’s never presented as someone incapable of seeing reason, and with Adora’s monologue about believing in the ability of anyone to change that makes us think that maybe he could be given reason to turn away from his presumed history of villainy. Additionally, when Shadow Weaver talked about her motivations for defecting she said “I want to destroy Hordak”, Shadow Weaver being a character that most viewers of the show likely already hate from seeing how abusive and power hungry she behaves seemingly on instinct. The fact that she’s the one bringing up the concept of killing him coinciding with Adora’s monologue may make the viewer sit back and try to reframe how they view Hordak as a character. This idea is what gets played with in his screen time for the rest of the season.

The very next episode is the big one (the holy grail for Entrapdak shippers). During this episode he blocks Entrapta from the blast of a failed portal experiment, she discovers his physical condition, he tells her about his past with Horde Prime and why he’s doing what he’s doing, she builds him new armor while saying one of the most inspirational quotes of all time (Imperfection is beautiful), and he awkwardly tries to properly thank her while getting help from his clone son Imp… Okay so let me just get to the biggest thing I want to talk about for this particular episode. The reveal of Horde Prime as the leader of a Galactic Horde has a huge impact on how Hordak himself is presented as a character. Firstly it presents the idea that Hordak himself won’t be the final boss of the series, thus opening up the audience to be more inclined to sympathize with him going forward. Secondly him literally being a clone brings forth the idea that he never really had a choice in how he turned out, and in a show that to this point has largely been about characters feeling trapped in terms of who they’re supposed to be by their familial figures in itself is likely to make the audience start to sympathize with him in realizing that war and being part of dictatorship is all he knows. Finally, we have him calling himself a failure and a defect in this scene. I feel as though this was done to draw forth parallels between Hordak’s relationship to Prime and Catra’s to Shadow Weaver. Prime called Hordak defective, Shadow Weaver called Catra worthless. Most people watching the show to this point will sympathize with Catra in one way or another and by having another villain in your show be paralleled to her is a way to invoke the audience to sympathize with them as well.

Now, for his interactions with Entrapta this particular episode. First we see him; a man with what seems to be muscular deterioration; using his body to shield her from an explosion. This would seem to show him as someone capable of putting others before himself, which as we learn in season 5 is something completely separating him from being like Horde Prime. After this we have him opening up to her about being a clone, having a defect, his feelings of being a failure, and him awkwardly trying to thank her. This whole sequence of scenes in part reveals a deeper truth about his character, namely the fact that he was for the most part programmed. All of his awfulness of season 2 and from presumed acts from before the show was pretty much what he was made for. He is someone who was literally engineered by an intergalactic dictator and essentially was born into a cult environment. When the only way he can thank her is by awkwardly saying “I acknowledge your work here, it’s very… technologically sound” and after some coaxing from Imp continuing with “No matter what you say, you are not a failure. And any who underestimate you are utter fools” we can gather one kind of tragic fact. Hordak before this point had never felt a positive emotion from anything not related to conquering and technological advancement, in all his time he had never before this felt love or companionship. While the line itself is funny and kind of endearing, it also reveals the underlying tragedy of his backstory. That tragedy being that realistically there was no alternative way for him to turn out up to this point, the fact that this comes from being born in the Horde and the indoctrination and abuse from a familial figure adds another parallel to Catra, and how the abuse cycle of what Prime did to Hordak set him in a place to start up his own empire, bring Shadow Weaver into it, and then she does the same thing to Catra that Prime did to Hordak. Essentially the source of Hordak’s stress and likely trauma is the first domino to fall in causing the events of the show to happen, Prime’s own ego and perfectionism is what eventually caused his downfall.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, as I still have more to say about this episode. I haven’t even really gotten into specifics on his defect, or his physical disability. Hordak would seem to have extreme muscular deterioration, he seems to have no tissue on his forearms leaving the bone exposed. The reveal is that his armor and technology are holding his physical body together. Most of the time a reveal like this regarding our presumed main villain would be a “The villain is more machine than man” type of trope like Darth Vader in A New Hope, however that’s not what’s done here. The armor and later pseudo-cybernetics aren’t so much to make him truly powerful and intimidate others as they are to cover up a vulnerability, and vulnerability is a very humanizing trait. The way this show chooses to completely subvert a trope here is interesting to me and says something about the series as a whole that I’ll probably extrapolate on later. What this decision says to me is that this show is one that cares about its characters, all of them, even in its villains they will ask you to look at and consider any vulnerability or redeemable quality in your judgement of them.

The next major scene involving him is the conversation between him and Entrapta having the portal machine almost ready. During the conversation they both seem sad about the prospect of being separated when Hordak rejoins Prime and they ultimately decide that they’ll wait to try it until the portal is absolutely perfect. This plan being ended by Catra coming back with the sword of protection. The reason for all he had done up to this point was rejoin with Horde Prime and he was now willing to slow down with trying to return to his brother, perhaps at this point if Catra hadn’t returned he might have scaled back the war efforts and settled for just continuing scientific pursuits with Entrapta, this isn’t guaranteed but it’s something that left open enough in the text of the show to where it can read as an aspect of his character.

The next major scene is when Catra lies about Entrapta betraying him and letting the princesses into the Fright Zone. This scene sets forth where his emotional state is during season 4, he falls to believe that; in spite of their work together and her telling him to not worry so much about being a failure and telling him that imperfection is beautiful; she never really cared about him and was just using him for his own destruction. The end of this season is probably Catra at her absolute worst. Entrapta outright told her that the portal would destroy the planet and then sent her to Beast Island after she used the words “Adora was right”. Having Hordak be another character hurt by some of Catra’s actions at a time when he may or may not have been on a trajectory to become a better person is an interesting interpretation of this scene to me (especially in light of her continuing by pulling the lever of the portal machine) because I feel like it was a great way to show Catra’s continued fall deeper and deeper into desperation and lashing out in anger and her potentially having at this point outgrown Hordak in terms of villainy (expressed in her Azula moment early in season 4). This idea kind of more puts Hordak on a similar level as the other characters, he’s no longer the untouchable ruler of the Etherian Horde if this bad kitty can come in and cause him to have what boils down to a broken heart. This scene is the final piece that to the audience completely breaks down the façade he had been putting on for so long.

Season 4 Hordak is a bit hard to explain. This season is when we see him committing the most on-screen villainous acts of the entire series, however largely he was being manipulated by Catra into actually setting foot on the battlefield. While this season has him being his most morally wrong, we also see this at a time when we’re somewhat newly aware of his vulnerabilities and insecurities and while he’s doing this we also see characters like Catra and Glimmer also falling further and further into behaving immorally or unethically. This kind of puts the audience in a really unique seat where we’re seeing the characters that we’ve grown to care about since the beginning of the series start to fall into something resembling tyrannical behavior like we’ve assumed from Hordak for so long. So while he’s at his worst at this time so is everyone else and in his case many of his actions here stem from believing that Entrapta betrayed him so there’s an extra layer of folly to what’s going on since it all stems from a lie. When Catra is trying to get him to step up the war effort to conquer all of Etheria she succeeds by pulling out the crystal that powers his armor that Entrapta gave him. When it’s removed he essentially collapses powerless. The crystal says LUVD (not that he or Entrapta knew, but the audience can learn it). Essentially this says that he is weak without love, when Entrapta was there, and she made him the armor he was made strong, when she’s gone and the crystal is removed he’s weak. 

There’s a scene where Hordak is talking to Catra about how their success would mean that he’d return to Prime’s side triumphant and worthy. When she hears him talk about this she kind of gives a look that shows just how much she actually understands the motivations. The audience knows this as well, we all saw the times when Shadow Weaver called her unworthy. This scene is the show itself basically telling us that any similarities between Hordak and Catra we gleaned from the reveal of his backstory wasn’t just us seeing something that wasn’t there. This scene essentially asks the audience to look at these two characters through similar lenses. It doesn’t tell you exactly HOW to view them, but asks for you to take a step back and measure any hypocrisy regarding how you view their various actions and then leave it at the door. The show asks you to sympathize with Hordak based on similarities with Catra;a character whom the audience probably sympathizes with from the very beginning; and having them both commit similar actions for similar motivations. 

Skipping ahead we have this sequence late in the season where Double Trouble cleverly tells Hordak that Catra sent Entrapta to Beast Island and the subsequent battle he has with the cat. The absolute rage and sadness in his eyes as the background completely fades out and we’re just focused on his face with tears starting to come out of his big red eyes while drenched in blackness, and then he just fires off his arm cannon around the room in anger. There’s just… so much to be said about this little sequence right here, it was beautifully done. What this scene expressed more than anything is that even if he didn’t know it, he was totally in love with Entrapta. He heard she was sent to beast Island, a place where he has sent people to DIE. He likely thinks she’s dead, and his first reaction was tears and to destroy part of his lab and then try to kill his second in command in revenge. I don’t know about you but this is something one would pretty much only do if they were in love with someone. Additionally I think the stylization of having the whole background fade to black during this scene is an interesting one. I think one meaning that could be taken from it is that with him believing she was dead he was sinking deeper into the darkness, that his ability to see the lighter side of the world was gone, the one person who could understand him was gone forever and he had spent all that time angry with her while working with her killer. A man who already was prone to self loathing and feeling like a failure now had nothing to lose. I think this is probably why early in season 5 after seeing Catra he goes to get his mind wiped again. Seeing Catra and her calling him by his name brought back some memories, memories that at this point only bring him pain. 

Speaking of Hordak and mindwipes though, the next major scene in my reading is the first time we truly see Horde Prime in his full glory. I’m going to focus less on Hordak saying that he did all his conquering for Prime, but more how Prime winds up seeing through him, and the horror that being part of the cultish Galactic Horde actually is. Prime is able to see into Hordak’s thoughts, he brushes his hands against the slot where the LUVD crystal once was and says “There was a time when you wished I wouldn’t come for you” confirming what everyone knew about his feelings towards Entrapta. After that Hordak seems to get basically reset to factory settings so to speak. Horde Prime immediately turns to Glimmer and apologises for his defective brother, she asks if this means he’d leave them alone to which he expresses that he’d have to destroy the planet to cover up the failures, he would have done it if Catra hadn’t brought up knowledge of the Heart of Etheria. What Horde Prime’s introduction does most of all is tell the audience that if they thought Hordak was evil then they really hadn’t seen anything yet. Hordak was but a child lashing out compared to the insane cult of planetary destruction and forced hegemony that is Horde Prime. If the brutality of the mindwipe of Hordak was anything to go off of it probably isn’t pleasant to be a clone either, but it’s their purpose for creation. “All beings must suffer to become pure” after all. 

This helps me segue into talking more about the rest of season 5 and get into detail about the Galactic Horde itself. Based on everything from the language used by Horde Prime and his clones, the fanaticism of most of said clones, the obsession with the color white, and the ideology it would seem as though the Galactic Horde is one thing. A cult. Horde Prime is a souped-up version of Shoko Asahara. He presents himself very charismatically and uses that as a way to mask the constant manipulation he does to everyone from his own clones, to any “Honored guests” he may have, and even his adversaries. He does all of this in a self serving effort to further his own perceived greatness. He is something that no other antagonist in this series ever was, a being of pure ego. Shadow Weaver, Hordak, and Catra even at their very worst were always shown to be affected by the histories and relationships they formed with other people. Even when they committed evil acts there was something recognizable about it, you still knew that this was a PERSON. Horde Prime, while being in the body of a man is surprisingly more reminiscent of something Lovecraftian than your typical supervillain. He’s ancient, his origin is never even hinted at, as though he’s been around forever and no one really knows. He can transfer his consciousness into any being within his hivemind, he has presumably hundreds or even thousands of his former bodies around for him to be able to check their memories, that means he has entire parts of his life he doesn’t remember. Horde Prime may have a humanoid figure, but as a character he’s much more like Cthulhu than Palpatine…. This is the being that created and essentially raised Hordak. A Lovecraftian style cult leader who either conquers planets, assimilates them into his hivemind, or destroys them all for shits and giggles. Hordak never stood a chance of being a good, well rounded person out of that environment. It all puts the Hordak of seasons 1-4 in a different context, shows just how deeply rooted indoctrination was for him.

After the second “purification” he undergoes one might wonder one thing regarding Hordak. Where could he possibly go from here? He’s had his mind wiped twice, he’s on Horde Prime’s ship, even if he did have his memories he believes that the one being who ever cared about him is dead, it really seems like he has nowhere to go… and then he sees the LUVD crystal lying on the floor near some rubble after Entrapta helped with rescuing Catra. He picks it up and looks into it for a second before letting out a somewhat surprised “Entrapta?” he may not fully remember who that is at the moment but they definitely mean something to him. There may be hope for Hordak after all. The audience knows this, especially since earlier in this same episode it’s revealed that Entrapta is keeping a list of clones that could be Hordak, she’s still looking for him.

Later he has another few scenes where he starts to remember some of his past. The cloning tanks with Prime’s former vessels reminding him of Entrapta and when he revealed who he was to her, he doesn’t have it all yet but the pieces are coming back slowly. They come back faster during Failsafe. When he finally sees Entrapta again he’s confused. “Why do I know your face?” She knows that it’s him. He’s not entirely sure he wants to remember, he considers his memories imperfections. As Swift Wind drags her away from the encounter like an idiot she reminds him “Your imperfections are beautiful”. Later in the episode we see her looking him up in the chip network and show a sweet smile on knowing that it really was him. At the beginning of the season the LUVD Crystal was tiny, but now it covers almost the entirety of the palm of his large clawed hands. His love has grown, and grown him as a person, this sets what happens next. 

During the two part finale he makes the most important decision of his life. Entrapta gets teleported up to Prime’s ship, directly in front of Hordak. As the rebels start making ground in the battle she starts making noise, telling Prime how he can’t win, he doesn’t know what makes them strong. Prime orders Hordak to kill her. He has a blank, confused, scared expression as he points the arm cannon at her at his brother’s command, tears start to form in her eyes. Is this because she’s afraid to die or because possibly the only person to truly understand her was lost and would be the one to make it happen? Hordak makes a split second decision to turn on his brother. He’s finally able to break through the abuse and indoctrination of Prime’s borderline Lovecraftian cult, throwing Prime’s body down a pit in the ship… Until Prime takes over Hordak’s body temporarily to once again try to intimidate the Etherians. 

There is one final scene involving Hordak that is important, that happens right after Adora purges out Horde Prime. We’re given a flashback of Hordak out in a meadow where he’s holding a baby Adora. He likely detected portal activity thinking perhaps Prime had come for him. Instead it was this helpless child, lost from her home and now on this strange world. Perhaps in a quick decision this man starting his own empire saw a piece of himself within her and would take her in. A small piece he forgot about in the many years later, but in this moment of her purging his creator from his mind now remembers. Adora looks at him with no derision or spite, but a soft smile, as though after all these years she finally is starting to understand who he is on a deeper level.

She-Ra and The Princesses of Power is a show that started airing on Netflix in 2018 and finished its run in 2020, and it is a show that is ostensibly about the connections we form with other people and how those affect us moving forward. On top of that it goes out of its way to say that in the end those connections are a positive that we’re better off for experiencing. Horde Prime is the show’s main antagonist and he is a being of pure ego, he views the connections the Etherians form with each other to be a weakness. Meanwhile, time and time again in season 5 those are exactly why he gets defeated. Adora can get through to Catra to break her from the chip, Netossa does the same with Spinnerella, Seahawk and Perfuma slightly do that with Mermista and Scorpia respectively��� But where does Hordak fit into this? In s5e3 Corridors Hordak goes to Prime to be “Purified'' after seeing Catra and she calls him by his name, a name being something clones of Lord Prime shouldn’t have. After the painful ritual Prime refers to him as “The purest among you” to the other clones surrounding the ritual. But in the end the connection he had formed with Entrapta led to even him turning on Prime anyway, that purity meant nothing because the bonds we form with other people supersedes all of that. If Hordak doesn’t turn on Prime like he did, for the reason he did then the messaging and themes of the show would have a place where they didn’t follow through as strongly. We’d have a victim of abuse that wasn’t able to get past their abuser, and a flawed person who didn’t wind up doing the right thing because they wanted to do right by the person they love. Without a positive ending for Hordak it makes the rest of the show’s positive endings weaker because it has a blatant exception to those victories, and while that could be poignant in some shows, I don’t think SPOP is that kind of show.  So you might be wondering… Why write all this? What made me think that writing a wall of text about Hordak of all fictional characters would be worth it? Part of it is because I wanted to explore why I care so much about this character and look into how his arc worked from a storytelling standpoint. I think the other part of it is simply seeing a lot of people not really seem to understand him as a character. There seems to be a very vocal group of people who hate him, or the Entrapdak ship for one reason or another and use that to kind of call those of us who do enjoy it bad people, so part of writing this is to maybe help some of those people who just flat out don’t understand how we could possibly be fans of the character get to know a bit of the reasoning behind it, and maybe show that the show specifically wrote him to be sympathetic. And maybe if you can see how it would be possible for us to love this character, maybe you can learn to appreciate him too. I can't force you to, but hopefully I can at least help you see where I’m coming from, and if you made it this far all I can say is thank you for reading. 

TLDR; Hordak is a very deeply complicated character who’s arc is more important to the themes of SPOP than you might think. 

[lady-of-glass-and-bone]

Songs & Characters Pedro Pascal

Ceremonials / Florence + The Machine

Part 3 of this adventure! Part 1 here and part 2 here if you want to check them out. Only one more part after this, for Florence + The Machine albums anyway.

Lyrics and their characters below the cut!

Only If For A Night / Jack ‘Whiskey’ Daniels, Ezra, Din Djarin

Whiskey / And I had a dream About my old school And she was there all pink and gold and glittering I threw my arms around her legs Came to weeping (Came to weeping) Came to weeping (Came to weeping)

And I heard your voice As clear as day And you told me I should concentrate It was all so strange And it's so surreal That a ghost should be so practical Only if for a night

Ezra / My doe, my dear, my darling Tell me what all this sighing's about Tell me what all this sighing's about

And I heard your voice As clear as day And you told me I should concentrate It was all so strange And it's so surreal That a ghost should be so practical Only if for a night

Din Djarin / And the only solution was to stand and fight And my body was bruised and I was set alight But you came over me like some holy rite And although I was burning, you're the only light Only if for a night

Shake It Out / Javier Peña, Maxwell Lord, Frankie Morales

Javier Peña /  And every demon wants his pound of flesh But I like to keep some things to myself I like to keep my issues strong It's always darkest before the dawn

And I've been a fool and I've been blind I can never leave the past behind I can see no way, I can see no way I'm always dragging that horse around

Maxwell Lord / Regrets collect like old friends Here to relive your darkest moments I can see no way, I can see no way And all of the ghouls come out to play 'Cause I am done with my graceless heart

So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart 'Cause I like to keep my issues strong It's always darkest before the dawn  

Frankie Morales / And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back So shake him off, oh whoa

I tried to dance with the devil on your back And given half the chance would I take any of it back It's a final mess but it's left me so empty It's always darkest before the dawn (Oh whoa, oh whoa)

And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope It's a shot in the dark and right at my throat 'Cause looking for heaven, found the devil in me Looking for heaven, for the devil in me Well what the hell I'm gonna let it happen to me

What The Water Gave Me / Max Phillips and Javier Peña

Max Phillips / Time it took us To where the water was That's what the water gave me And time goes quicker Between the two of us Oh, my love, don't forsake me Take what the water gave me 

'Cause they took your loved ones But returned them in exchange for you But would you have it any other way? Would you have it any other way? You could have it any other way

'Cause she's a cruel mistress And the bargain must be made But oh, my love, don't forget me When I let the water take me

Javier Peña / And oh, poor Atlas The world's a beast of a burden You've been holding on a long time And all this longing And the ships are left to rust That's what the water gave us

So lay me down Let the only sound Be the overflow Pockets full of stones Lay me down Let the only sound Be the overflow

Never Let Me Go / Frankie Morales, Din Djarin, Pero Tovar

Frankie Morales / Looking up from underneath Fractured moonlight on the sea Reflections still look the same to me As before I went under

And it's peaceful in the deep 'Cause either way you cannot breathe No need to pray, no need to speak Now I am under

Oh, and it's breaking over me A thousand miles out to the sea bed Found the place to rest my head

Din Djarin / Though the pressure's hard to take It's the only way I can escape It seems a heavy choice to make But now I am under, oh

And it's breaking over me A thousand miles down to the sea bed I found the place to rest my head

(Never let me go, never let me go Never let me go, never let me go)

And the arms of the ocean are carrying me (So cold and so sweet) And all this devotion was rushing out of me And the questions I have for a sinner like me But the arms of the ocean deliver me

Pero Tovar / In the arms of the ocean, so sweet and so cold And all this devotion, well, I never knew at all And the questions I have for a sinner released In the arms of the ocean deliver me

And it's over I'm going under But I'm not giving up I'm just giving in

Breaking Down / Frankie Morales and Maxwell Lord

Frankie Morales /  All alone it was always there you see And even on my own It was always standing next to me I can see it coming from the edge of the room Creeping in the streetlight holding my hand in the pale gloom Can you see it coming now?

All alone on the edge of sleep My old familiar friend Comes and lies down next to me And I can see it coming from the edge of the room Smiling in the streetlight even with my eyes shut tight I still see it coming now

Maxwell Lord / All alone even when I was a child I've always known there was something to be frightened of I can see it coming from the edge of the room Creeping in the streetlight holding my hand in the pale gloom Can you see it coming now?

Ah-ah, ah-ah I think I'm breaking down again Ah-ah, ah-ah I think I'm breaking down

Lover To Lover  / Javier Peña and Oberyn Martell

Oberyn Martell / I've been losin' sleep I've been keepin' myself awake I've been wandering the streets For days and days and days

Going from road to road Bed to bed Lover to lover And black to red But I believe I believe

There's no salvation for me now No space among the clouds And I feel I'm heading down But that's alright That's alright

Javier Peña / And I've been taking chances I've been setting myself up for the fall And I've been keeping secrets From my heart and from my soul

Going from road to road Bed to bed Lover to lover And black to red But I believe I believe

There's no salvation for me now No space among the clouds And I feel I'm heading down But that's alright That's alright That's alright That's alright

No Light, No Light / Marcus Pike, Din Djarin , Ezra

Marcus Pike / You want a revelation You want to get it right And it's a conversation I just can't have tonight

You want a revelation Some kind of resolution You are the revelation

But would you leave me If I told you what I've done And would you leave me If I told you what I've become

'Cause it's so easy To sing it to a crowd But it's so hard, my love To say it to you, all alone

Din Djarin / And I'd do anything to make you stay No light, no light (No light) Tell me what you want me to say

Through the crowded islands crying out at me In your place there were a thousand other faces I was disappearing in plain sight Heaven help me I need to make it right

Ezra / You are the hole in my head You are the space in my bed You are the silence in between What I thought and what I said

You are the night-time fear You are the morning when it's clear When it's over your start You're my head, you're my heart

No light, no light in your bright blue eyes I never knew daylight could be so violent A revelation in the light of day You can choose what stays and what fades away

Seven Devils / Literally all of them. Every single one of them fits this song in one way or another.

Heartlines / Marcus Moreno, Jack ‘Whiskey’ Daniels, Frankie Morales, Marcus Pike

Marcus Moreno / Just keep following The heartlines on your hand Just keep following The heartlines on your hand Keep it up, I know you can Just keep following The heartlines on your hand 'cause I am

Whiskey / On the sea, on the sea and land over land Creeping and crawling like the sea over sand Still I follow heartlines on your hand

This fantasy, this fallacy, this tumbling stone Echoes of a city that's long overgrown Your heart is the only place that I call home Can I be returned, you can You can, we can

Frankie Morales / Oh the river, oh the river, it's running free And oh the joy, oh the joy it brings to me But I know it'll have to drown me Before it can breathe easy

And I've seen it in the flights of birds I've seen it in you the entrails of the animals The blood running through, but in order to get to the heart I think sometimes you'll have to cut through, but you can't

Marcus Pike / Just keep following The heartlines on your hand Just keep following The heartlines on your hand Keep it up, I know you can Just keep following The heartlines on your hand

What a thing to do Oh-woah-oh what a thing to choose But know, in some way I'm there with you Up against the wall on a Wednesday afternoon

Spectrum / Ezra, Din Djarin, Max Phillips

Ezra / When we first came here We were cold and we were clear With no colors in our skin We were light and paper thin

And when we first came here We were cold and we were clear With no colors in our skin 'Til we let the spectrum in

Din Djarin / And when we come for you We'll be dressed up all in blue With the ocean in our arms Kiss your eyes and kiss your palms

And when it's time to pray We'll be dressed up all in grey With metal on our tongues And silver in our lungs

Max Phillips / And when we come back we'll be dressed in black And you'll scream my name aloud And we won't eat and we won't sleep We'll drag bodies from a ground

So say my name And every colour illuminates And we are shining And we'll never be afraid again

All This And Heaven Too / Ezra, Marcus Pike, Din Djarin

Ezra / And the heart is hard to translate It has a language of it's own It talks in tongues and quiet sighs And prayers and proclamations in the grand days Of great men and the smallest of gestures In short shallow gasps

No, words are a language It doesn't deserve such treatment And all my stumbling phrases Never amounted to anything worth this feeling All this heaven never could describe Such a feeling as I'm healing, words were never so useful So I was screaming out a language That I never knew existed before

Marcus Pike / But with all my education I can't seem to commend it And the words are all escaping me And coming back all damaged And I would put them back in poetry If I only knew how, I can't seem to understand it

And I would give all this and heaven too I would give it all if only for a moment That I could just understand The meaning of the word you see 'Cause I've been scrawling it forever But it never makes sense to me at all

Din Djarin / And it talks to me in tiptoes And sings to me inside It cries out in the darkest night And breaks in the morning light

Leave My Body / Dave York and Ezra

Dave York / I don't need a husband, don't need no wife And don't need the day, I don't need the night And I don't need the birds let them fly away And I don't want the crowds, they never seem to stay

I'm gonna leave my body (Moving up to higher ground) I'm gonna lose my mind (History keeps pulling me down) Said I'm gonna leave my body (Moving up to higher ground) I'm gonna lose my, lose my mind (History keeps pulling me, pulling me down)

Ezra / I'm gonna be released from behind these lies And I don't care whether I live or die And I'm losing blood, I'm gonna leave my bones And I don't want your heart it leaves me cold

I don't want your future I don't need your past One bright moment Is all I ask

[aros001]

Going in blind: Watching season 3 for the first time. Random thoughts.

Episode 1: I know in the original series She-Ra was the sister of He-Man so I'm curious how much of that will be carried over to this series. Not saying He-Man has to make an appearance, same as how Batman didn't need to show up in Teen Titans. That was Robin's story, not his, and similarly this is Adora's story, not Adam's. Regardless, it makes sense why Hordak was so annoyed with the baby Adora in Shadow Weaver's flashbacks. To SW, there was something different and special about the baby, but to Hordak, whom seems familiar with the world before Mara separated Etheria from the rest of the universe, including Eternia potentially, Adora is just another "First One" child like he's seen many times before. Special in comparison to those who only know Etheria.

Great clap-back from Catra to Hordak, and not entirely unfounded. It's debatable how much he actually cares about conquering Etheria. He has others leading his forces in his war yet all his focus is on his portal creation.

According to Entrapta, productivity of the Horde is up 400% ever since Catra became Hordak's 2nd in command. I wondering how much of that is Catra's direct doing? Is she genuinely just that good of a commander? Is it because she's properly delegating and Scorpia has been handling most of the load? Or is this just because it's in comparison to Shadow Weaver? Entrapta said Catra's focus on First Ones' tech has been greatly aiding them and SW definitely focused more on magic, which was an aid mostly to herself since everyone else in the Horde seems to fight only with weapons and technology. And most of what she saw of SW while she was Hordak's 2nd was her being obsessed with bringing back Adora rather than fighting the war.

Episode 2: Let's see... Hordak's easily an adult and Entrapta is...[checks google] late twenties, early thirties. Oh good, then let's sail this ship!

But yeah, that was a heck of a backstory for Hordak. This reminds me of a video by a Youtuber named Savage Books comparing the villain Steppenwolf in the theatrical and Snyder Cut versions of Justice League and how, while he still wasn't a great villain, just a small addition made him a much better villain, that being a failure in his past and the desire just to go home. And in this case, Hordak is the much better, or at least way more developed, version of that. One of many clones of Hordak Prime but having a defect that labelled him a failure and had him cast out to Etheria, a "backwards world" as he's called it before. If he can conquer Etheria, perhaps by building a portal that'll bring forward Prime's army, he believes that'll prove to Prime that he is not a failure and that he can return home to rejoin his forces. Just this bit of backstory adds SO MUCH to Hordak, including new insights on his past interactions, and keeps him from being a flat character like theatrical version Steppenwolf. His lack of tolerance for failure makes sense when he himself is trying to prove that he's not. It gives him compelling motivation to want to conquer Etheria beyond just power and greed. Not motivation you're meant to agree with but one you can still understand.

I like the story with Huntara too. It's a nice little tie-in to something Adora was talking about with Glimmer and Bow last episode. Adora defected from the horde, not because she was different but rather very much in spite being very much like every other soldier there. She wanted to believe Shadow Weaver may have at least some goodness in her too and now we have Huntara as a fellow defector who realized the evils of the Horde, even if she chose to stay out of the war entirely after.

Episode 3: I legit thought Catra stabbed the goat lady for a second.

After Scorpia asking her why don't they just stay in the wastes I'm seeing a bit of a parallel between Catra and Hordak. They've both found a place where they can be the top dog, where they can do and have basically anything they want; her with the wastes and him with the Horde. They can be happy. ...But there's still this pull they're feeling to somewhere else. Catra back to the Horde and Hordak back to Prime. Because they feel they have to prove something; prove that they're not failures. They could be happy but they can't let go.

And that scene between Adora and Catra at the end. That was such a great line read from Catra's actor. "She left me for you. Everything that's happened is because of you." I got chills.

Minor note: While I'm only judging off the Mara hologram, which didn't have color, I do think the She-Ra outfit looks better with pants than shorts like Adora's She-Ra form. I think it makes it look sleeker, if that makes any sense.

Episode 4: Catra's spiral has turned into a drill and its taking her down as far as she can go. Though something I had to a laugh a little at myself over was that my biggest "Catra, no!" reaction wasn't to her wanting to open the portal but rather when she lied to Hordak and said Entrapta let the princesses in. She was actually a positive influence on Hordak's life and Catra with one move just destroyed that relationship and all progress Hordak had been making.

I'm guessing there's going to be some kind of long-term effect from Shadow Weaver continuously siphoning off Glimmer's magic. The woman is basically a parasite and the magic she uses is very different from the kind Glimmer does. I can't believe it never occurred to me that since Shadow Weaver trained Glimmer's father there might be a connection there between the two of them later in the story. While we don't know about anything that might've happened after she left, SW clearly had enough affection for Micah still to not kill him. I could see her trying to take Glimmer on as a student later like she did him.

Episode 5: There is something kind of hilarious about it being Scorpia's jealousy of Catra and Adora's closeness that causes her to be the first one after Adora to pick up that something is off.

11 is my favorite of the Doctor Who Doctors so naturally I'm comparing all this to the crack in Amy Pond's bedroom wall. Whatever goes in gets forgotten about and basically never existed. Though does that mean Bright Moon isn't going to remember the Horde? Basically that entire place got sucked up in the collapsing reality. There shouldn't be at war anymore because their enemy literally no longer exists.

Adora and Catra had their own little Star Trek 3 moment there.

Adora: "If we don't help each other, we'll die here!"

Catra: "Perfect! Then that's the way it shall be!"

Catra's just so far down her spiral she doesn't even care about getting her own win, just so long as Adora doesn't get one, despite just minutes ago clearly loving having Adora back in her life and on her side, to the point was trying to resist remembering the old reality. Her "perfect" world was them together again but when given the chance (another of many. I love those cuts to their past woven in there) she slapped the hand away.

I'm sure I'm wrong but I'm starting to theorize Madam Razz is actually Mara and just at some point went kind of crazy and started thinking as and Mara were two different people.

Episode 6:

"You are everything I ever wanted in a son. This... This is everything I ever wanted in a life. ...But I've got responsibilities, Van. And...I have to...go now."

-Superman, Justice League Unlimited: For the Man Who Has Everything

That was my favorite episode of JLU, where Superman is trapped in this world that isn't real but still perfect in every way, and the only way out was to give up everything he'd ever wanted, including a son he remembers watching grow up, even if it never really happened. With a similar premise, this definitely helped elevate Angela up a bit for me, whom I was kind just meh with before. I didn't dislike her but I didn't really care much for her either. This episode gave her a lot to work with though, with the heavy sacrifice she made. Not just saying behind to pull out the sword but just simply forcing herself to accept her husband is gone and not coming back. I was right that they wouldn't remember the Horde, but I definitely didn't think of the full effects of them never existing. They never exist, Bow never becomes a rebel instead of a scholar like his dads wanted. They don't exist, Micah never dies in battle against them. Glimmer gets to grow up with her father in her life. Everyone, most especially Angela, has to reject everything they would love to be real in favor of what actually is.

I'm guessing we're going to have Shadow Weaver taking advantage of this situation, trying to act like a teacher and mother-figure to Glimmer now that she's basically a orphan.

I talked before about how Catra and Hordak seem to have a parallel between them, especially regarding failure. Catra seems like she has a very hard time accepting her own failures and mistakes and thus why she more or less uses Adora as a mental scapegoat for all of it. Nothing is ever really her fault, it's Adora's, or Shadow Weaver's, or Hordak's. It makes for a great moment when Adora finally punches back, both literally and figuratively. She's not going to accept responsibility for Catra's actions anymore. She gave Catra every chance to make the right choice and she didn't, so now she has to finally live with the consequences. Heck of a glare She-Ra gave Catra at the end. Very much a "If I ever see you again..." and it certainly scared Catra, at least for a moment.

Now, someone go save Entrapta from Beast Island!

Season 3 verdict: Easily the best season thus far. I know this was technically the second half of season 2 but even in comparison to the full season 1 there was just so much that happened in this, so much that got revealed, and so, so many moments of emotion or tension. Weirdly I feel kind of disappointed that Hordak Prime is probably going to come in now and be the new big villain. I really like our Hordak's motivation and Prime seems like he might just be the generic conqueror for power that Hordak seemed like he was going to be at first. Not saying those types can't work. I love All For One from My Hero Academia and Frieza from Dragon Ball. Those guys are pure evil and selfishness, but they also have a captivating presence/charisma to them.

Naturally, since I bring her up the most out of all the characters, I'm very curious to see what happens with Catra now. She's basically nuked every positive relationship she had with anyone. Entrapta's gone, she threatened Scorpia, Hordak's not going to trust anyone including her anymore now that he thinks Entrapta's betrayed him, and Adora firmly sees her as an enemy. She has no one (those under her direct command don't count) and it's entirely her own fault.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrincessesOfPower/comments/o0trfz/going_in_blind_watching_season_3_for_the_first/

[lillotte17]

Words to Fill Space

Whelp, I’m not going to finish this since the literal creator of the show sort of pulled the rug out from under me. (bless) But I liked what I got down, so I figured I might as well toss it out into the void. 

~

Catra knew who was on the other side of the door before it even finished opening. After all, she had hardly given her a moment to herself since rescuing her. Not that Catra minded the abundance of attention, exactly.

She didn't know how she felt about it, if she was being honest.

Any of it.

When she had been trapped on Prime's ship, some tiny quaking voice inside her had hoped against hope that Adora would come for her. That her inherent need to play the hero would override all the anger and resentment she must hold for her now. That a single shining thread of the promise they had made to take care of each other was still binding them to one another across the vast reaches of space and time, bitter words and bloodied hands.

Catra had hoped, but she hadn't really thought it would happen.

And yet, Adora was here, standing her the doorway with what seemed to be an armful of blankets and pillows, grinning from ear to ear like an idiot. 

She wasn't sure what feeling the image instilled in her, but it was more than a little overwhelming. Everything that involved Adora seemed to be like that. Too big. Too bright. Heart hammering behind her ribs.

"What do you want this time?" Catra grumbled, curling into herself on the thin mattress at the center of the room, hiding her face in the crook of her arm, "I apologized to Entrapta, and I played nice with your friends at dinner, what else do I have to do before you let me get some sleep?"

"I remembered that you get cold easily," Adora explained, not at all put off by the less than cordial greeting, "The ship only has a few bedrooms, but we found a bunch of extra blankets and things in storage, and I figured you might want some of it."

So saying, she tossed a blanket at Catra's head, burying her face in soft stifling fabric. Catra hissed, flailing at the unexpected darkness for a moment before managing to tug herself free. Adora snorted.

"Gee thanks," Catra snarled, "Now can I go to sleep?"

"Well, sure, but…um," Adora began, suddenly looking a bit sheepish.

"Yes, what else do you want?" Catra heaved a sigh, rolling onto her back and flinging an arm over her face.

"There aren't enough bedrooms to go around," Adora admitted, "The rest of us all agreed to double up, but we knew that you were still having a hard time adjusting to being around everyone so… It seemed like I was probably the best choice to send in here with you? After all, it's not like we've never shared a room before…"

Catra moved her arm just enough to take a long look at Adora's face. There was something unbearably soft about it. Uncertainty dancing along the fringes of hope. The dim lighting painting her pale blue eyes the color of storm clouds. Her mouth teetering on the edge of a smile.

"That was a long time ago," Catra reminded her, shifting her gaze away.

"It wasn't that long ago…" Adora insisted quietly, "We don't… You don't have to talk to me or anything. I'm just going to bed down on the floor."

"Do whatever you want," Catra replied with a huff, "It's your ship anyway. It's not like I could kick you out even if I wanted to."

"…do you want to?" Adora wondered.

"…no."

The mumbled admission was apparently enough consent for Adora to move fully into the room and start arranging her makeshift bedding in one corner, tucked up against the wall.

After a minute or two of shuffling around, Adora seemed to settle. The only sound in the room afterwards was the faint sound of even breaths. She smelled a little different than Catra remembered -probably some kind of fancy princess soap as opposed to the regulation bars the Horde passed out- but beneath all that, she was the same. A light honest scent, with the faintest tang of sweat. The smell of safety and trust, and home.

For the first time in ages, Catra felt something inside her unclench, just slightly.

"Do you ever wonder what would have happened…if you had let me come with you when you went back for the sword?" Carta asked, her voice low, and her eyes fix firmly on the ceiling.

The was a long stretch of silence, and for a moment she thought Adora might have already fallen asleep.

"Not anymore," Adora replied, soft and remorseful, "I used to, back at the beginning of all this. I drove myself crazy trying to think of what I could have done differently that would have made you change your mind and leave with me. How I could fix things between us so we could be friends again. But then…"

"Then I opened the portal," Catra guessed, sounding bitter, although mostly at herself, "And you gave up on me."

"I never gave up on you!" Adora insisted, sitting up from her pile of blankets to fix her with an intense look, "You just… You wouldn't let me help you! You wouldn't listen to anything I had to say! You kept hurting me, and my friends, and everyone around you, and then trying to push the blame somewhere else when things went wrong. We grew up together, I know you better than anyone else in the whole world. I always knew you could be better than that. I've seen you be better than that! But it's not like I could just punch you into being a good person, you know? I tried! A lot! You had to want it for yourself first. What else was I supposed to do for you, Catra?"

"I…I don't know," Catra whispered the admission into the dark. She felt her heart sinking in her chest. The same bleak helplessness that had been dogging her for months stealing back into her thoughts. Despair and shame and regret. Knowing that, once again, no matter how hard she worked for it, no matter how far she stretched out her hand, the things she wanted were still beyond her grasp.

"It…It's never going to be the same, is it?" she asked thickly, choking down all the other things she wanted to say. Not even having the words for half of them. "Between you and me?"

"…Probably not," Adora sighed.

Catra made a quiet strangled sound, biting back tears. She was so sick of crying. Sick of losing and being lost. Being left. But she didn't have it in her to lash out anymore.    

Her ears twitched at the sound of shifting blankets and bare feet padding across the room.

Adora sat at the foot of her bed, her expression uncharacteristically hard to make out. Catra sat up and stared back at her, trying to mask her own upset. After a few moments of contemplation, Adora finally reached out and touched her hand. Brief and gentle. Comforting.

"We can't go back to the way things were before," she said, "But maybe that's for the best. I don't think either of us were as good at being friends as we thought we were. The Horde wasn't really a great place to learn anything that didn't involve hitting things and yelling. We both made mistakes. We both hurt each other. Unintentionally, and…less than unintentionally, too. I don't want us to be like that again."

"I…understand," Carta replied. Her shoulders were shaking. Adora covered them with her hands, warm and steadying.

"But maybe, we can make something better?" Adora suggested, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards.  

"Better?" Catra repeated dumbly, momentarily at a loss.

"Yeah. Better." Adora confirmed, a full-blown smile blooming across her face this time, crinkling the corners of her eyes. The low-lit crystals in the room seemed to all agree to pool their light withing her gaze at once, making her eyes shine like starlight.

Catra almost wanted to cover them with her hands. She felt like Adora could melt her from the inside out with those eyes. Even without She-Ra's powers.

"I'm…not sure I know how to do that," she admitted instead, trying not to let out a very telling sniffle.

"Me neither," Adora huffed in wry amusement, "But I'm willing to try if you are."

"And you really think all your princess friends in the Rebellion are just going to accept that?" Catra wondered, disbelieving, "Accept me? Like nothing happened?"  

"Well…probably not at first," Adora conceded, "You did send an awful lot of bots and soldiers to shoot us. But they accepted Scorpia, and they forgave Entrapta, why should you be any different?"

"I've done a lot worse things than either of them," Catra pointed out.

"Alright, that's fair," Adora sighed, "But there's no way you've done worse things than Shadow Weaver, and she's part of the Rebellion now. I mean, nobody likes her or trusts her at all, but she's still there. Nobody tortured her, or suggested sending her off to Beast Island or something. The Rebellion isn't like the Horde; people who make mistakes can have a chance to fix them. It'll be hard, and I can't promise that all of them will like you, or decide to forgive you for what you did, but I know they'll at least give you a chance to try and make things right."

"Shadow Weaver never flipped a switch that nearly ripped the entire planet apart," Catra scoffed.

"No, you're right," Adora agreed, rolling her eyes, "She just spent twenty years or so helping Hordak manipulate orphans into destroying their own planet just to get back at the Sorcerer's Guild for throwing her out. She also poisoned Plumeria, tortured Glimmer, tried to wipe my mind, and almost destroyed Mystacor. And I mean…that's not even getting into everything she did to both of us while we were growing up."

"You don't have to try and make excuses," Catra said, looking away, "Shadow Weaver wasn't half as good at running the Horde as I was. I'm not sure if that says something impressive about me, or pathetic about her, but I don't think any kind of comparison between us is flattering. I'm not exactly proud that I was better at being awful than she was."

"You aren't?" Adora blinked.

"I know, right?" Catra chuckled dryly, "It surprised me, too."

Adora snorted. She caught her gaze again, and the air settled in silence between them for a few heartbeats. Not in anger or frustration or resentment, but something almost comfortable. Almost like friends.

Almost.

Adora smiled at her again, soft this time.

"You know, there is one huge thing you did that Shadow Weaver didn't," she said.

"Oh yeah?" Catra drawled, trying to act nonchalant, but feeling a touch apprehensive despite herself.

"Yeah," Adora continued, her smile curling up into more of a grin, "You said you were sorry."

[cilldaracailin]

So I went for a job interview today for a promotion within the childcare service that I work in. I have only ever worked in a room with the children but since we were back to work after lockdown, I have been in the office as a debute supervisor. A job came up for a debute manager and I decided I would go for it (God loves a trier right?....)

So I thought the interview went terrible when it came to answering questions about office work - (I was literally thrown in the deep end  after lockdown and was kinda floating rather than swimming a lot of the time, along with doing what I could and was shown to do as well as helping out the manager in the second service in the town) - I really didn’t have a great answer for those questions and actually said I don’t know a few times but gave as good an answer as I could from my ten years experience for the others. Went home thinking there is no chance I got that job, especially when the supervisor went for the job too.

Got back to work all the girls were asking how it was. I was like ‘meh it was alright, don’t think I got it’ and I was prepared to go back to my Pre-School room as the supervisor is back tomorrow.

Then was told an hour later by my manager that I GOT THE BLOODY JOB!

I am still in shock. I am now a Debute Manager of the creche I work in as of tomorrow and I am shitting it a little. (Or maybe a lot).

The work I need to do, is what I have been doing since I came back to work after lockdown with some more things so I know I can do it but still there is always that niggle of doubt. But me *points to herself* a debute manager. Never thought I would ever have a manager with my name!

Childcare is the only thing I have ever been good at or ever felt I did well and it feels like that yeah maybe I am doing it right and doing a good job and should finally believe in myself and what I can do.

In honour of this new found revelation (Still in shock) I am going to post some of my favourite pictures I have taken or have from over the last few years so make me smile and hopefully you all too.

(Might take a few posts as Tumblr limits to ten pictures a post.... and I have a lot!)

This is the Island of Baru of the coast of Colombia in South America. Beautiful Caribbean beach with clear beach water and golden sand.

Not that you would know, but trust when I say, that is me paragliding off the Andes in Colombia.

One of those attempts at an arty picture from inside a church in a beautiful little town called Villa De Leyva in Colombia.

One of my favourite pictures of me and my dog Lilah. Came in after a crappy night out with friends and it was like she knew and gave me a hug.

When dreams can actually come true. I have loved dolphins since I was a kid and said that I wanted to be a dolphin therapist but I was always told it wasn’t a thing. Well in 2015 I proved it was a thing and went to study to become a dolphin therapist. That’s me in the water with a beautiful dolphin called Misha. It so specialised though so almost impossible to work in the field but I did it anyway.

More dolphin pictures. Me and Misha have the craic in the water.

So this was the time I bought a tunnel and going to train my dog to be one of the show dogs that could do amazing agility skills. I trained Lilah to go through the tunnel but that was where it stopped ‘cos she kept getting stuck! hahaha!

Another one of those claw machine wins.....

This is Lahinch Beach in Co. Clare in Ireland. Surfers paradise and a stunning beach. Ireland is so beautiful in the sun.

That time I finally got to meet the lads from Busted and be what’s called the OMFG Zone for their concert. Its basically a much more peaceful mosh pit right in front of the stage in it’s own circular section. Best gig and I ain’t ashamed to admit to my love of Busted. A lot my fanfiction as a teenager were based on Busted.

That chocolate biscuit cake that comes out every Christmas covered in malteasers.... Yum!

Those second place white chocolate chip cookies! (If you read Robyn and Taron you know what I am talking about...)

That one time another dream came true and I meet Ariel and told her that I was a dolphin therapist and had a conversation about the ocean. My ultimate and favourite Disney Princess.

That one time I made a sugar cookie Christmas tree....

That time “The Beast from the East” came. Storm Emma covered the place with snow for five days. There were eight foot snow drifts along the road I live on.

When The Beach Boys came to Dublin and my parents and I went to see them and it was amazing! Such nostalgia!

I know most people won’t get this reference if you are not Irish but this a tea cosy I knitted based on a children’s television character called Bosco who lived in a box. Huge part of my childhood.

I ice Christmas cakes every year and this was one of my favourite designs, hand pipped on without a mistake. It’s such a cute tree!

That time I paid €100 to go and see Hugh Jackman in concert and I was front and centre of the stage and it was bloody amazing!

The circus theme caked I made with the girls from Pre-School for our Circus themed Graduation last year. Inside was a red and white cake with butter cream and was amazing! So proud of our fondant work!

That time last year when another dream came through and I got to go and see Winter and Hope and PJ in Clearwater Florida and sat in front of the glass windows for ages just staring at them.

Sunsets in Clearwater Florida. I don’t think it needs anything else said.

That time I got to dress as Elsa for work for Halloween and loved every minute of it! ;)

When I got to sing Somebody to Love with my amazing SuSo Gospel choir in the church in my home town.

Carne Beach Co. Wexford where I spent nearly ever summer as a kid and it was amazing! Again, Ireland is stunning in the sun.

When I got to go and see The Foo Fighters (again) in a place called Slane in Co. Meath. It’s a castle with huge ground where concerts are held every year and this gig was amazing. Apart from the horrible weather. It bucketed down with rain but I was prepared with layers, wellies, a giant warm coat and many ponchos. (This was before Dave Grohl fell off the stage in Germany and broke his leg).

The Eiffel Tower at night.

I don’t have a caption for this one. It speaks for it’s self and it I love everything about it.

“How do you get a Pikachu on a bus? You Pokémon...” (Sorry not sorry, it makes me laugh every time!)

Another one of those claw machine wins. A giant rainbow unicorn!

The Christmas tree in the lobby of The Plaza Hotel in NYC. Stunning! (As is the afternoon tea! ;) )

One of favourite pictures that I took in New York at Christmas last year. A beautifully lit tree and the Empire State building in the background.

And last but not least, this beautiful, humble and wonderful person. I can’t take any credit for this picture but I had to put one in and it is definitely one of my favourites.

And that is them all! They all fitted. Just felt like sharing some picture love while I was still taking in my great news. Hopefully I will be ok in my new position and not bitten off more than I can chew! :)

xxx

[jovialyouthmusic]

Top of the Tree

Bastien meets Sophia’s parents for the first time as they visit for Christmas

Word Count 3592

A/N All the ‘holiday’ (for Brits, read ‘Christmas’) stories got me wondering what Sophia and Bastiens’ first celebration would be like. Please note I have modelled Sophia’s parents on mine as a tribute to them. There are a few truths hidden in the story - see if you can spot them, or I’d be happy to tell when asked.

Warnings - brief mention of problems with fertility. Otherwise, all fluff xx

Bastien waited with Sophia in the tiny terminal of Cordonia’s airport. Her eyes shone and she fidgeted nervously. Her parents were arriving soon to spend the Christmas holidays with them and meet Bastien for the first time. He was restless, pulling at his tie, wishing he had a mirror to check that he was neatly presented. In order to make a good impression he had left his cane in the car, as he was able to do for short periods of time, though he knew he might regret it later.

‘They’ll be landing soon’ she exclaimed ‘It will be so good to see them – it’s been a long time’

‘I’m looking forward to meeting them’ Bastien smiled, though he felt a slight pang of nervousness.

‘They want to meet you too’ she replied ‘Having them here for Christmas will be lovely.’

‘Are you absolutely sure they’re okay with me being so much older?’ Bastien asked for the tenth time. He wasn’t really much for family gatherings, only having foster parents, and it was important to him that Sophia’s parents like him. She hugged his arm and leaned into him

‘It’s fine Bas, ten years isn’t that big a difference, and they know my tastes. My first proper boyfriend was six years older and Dad nearly had a fit, but he’s cool now. Don’t worry, Bas - Mum will just eat you up and Dad will want to hear all about your job. Staying at the Palace is a huge deal for Mum – she’s always following news of the British Royal Family. She’ll probably not know what to do with herself, but she’ll settle down’

The airport tannoy announced the arrival of the flight, and soon the passengers started to file through. Sophia grinned excitedly

‘Oh there they are!’ she bounced on the balls of her feet and waved as a middle aged couple – the man tall and dark haired, the woman a full head and a half shorter and also raven haired, detached themselves from the line and made their way toward them. As a child, she had amazed admirers – she was a cute toddler but a fair haired girl with dark haired parents drew many an odd stare, but it was natural and in later years she delighted in telling folk that it was quite possible, as both parents must hold a recessive gene for blonde hair. She was a cherished only child, her mother having had trouble conceiving, and in the back of her mind she had wondered whether it would be possible for her to have children at all. Her biological clock had not troubled her at all, and of course, Bastien had a vasectomy so unless he specifically had it reversed, fertility wasn’t a pressing issue.

She couldn’t contain herself any longer and rushed forward to throw her arms wide and hug her mother. Her father, a stern faced man who looked younger than his years, as did her mother to a greater degree, smiled warmly at the reunion and turned his gaze to Bastien as he made his way toward the family group. He felt his stomach lurch with apprehension – this was a unique situation as he’d never had a partner long enough for it to be considered important to meet relatives. He smiled nervously as Sophia let go of her mother and turned to her father to hug him warmly too.

‘Dad, I hope you had enough leg room, are you okay?’ she asked. Bastien was now under the full scrutiny of Edith, who looked him up and down appraisingly before speaking,

‘Is this your man, darling?’ she asked cautiously and Sophia turned back to him, taking his arm and pulling him closer, smiling happily

‘Mum, Dad, this is Bastien’ she replied ‘Bas, meet my parents’ He plastered a smile on his face and extended his hand to her father, who reached out and grasped it firmly, patting his elbow with the other.

‘A pleasure to meet you, Bastien’ he intoned gravely

‘Mr Turner – Mrs Turner’ he replied

‘Please, call me Bob – and this is Edith’ her father replied. Bastien badly wanted to loosen his collar and he felt himself sweating slightly. This had to be the second most terrifying moment of his life, worse than diving to shield Liam from the assassin’s bullet, only slightly less terrifying than the moment he realised Sophia had been kidnapped.  His heart hammered in his chest and his hands felt clammy. It was ridiculous that over his working life he had faced many a danger with cool aplomb, but this was seriously threatening his usually calm demeanour.

‘Of course Bob - Edith’ he answered. Edith was eyeing him up – literally, as he was two heads taller than her, and he swallowed hard.

‘My goodness, you’re tall’ she remarked ‘what’s the weather like up there?’

‘Mum – for goodness sake’ Sophia sighed ‘That has to be the oldest joke in the book.’ Bastien realised he was staring at the older woman, holding his breath. The others looked at him and he snapped out of it, smiling faintly

‘Joke – ah it was a joke – oh actually I’ve not heard that for a long time’ he blurted, affecting a laugh.

‘Probably not since your school days’ Bob remarked ‘Don’t worry son, everyone’s tall to her – she’s such a shortarse’ He patted her shoulder and Bastien blinked at the apparent abusive term, but Edith only rolled her eyes and sighed.

‘Oh Turner’ she said exasperatedly, and looked back to Bastien ‘Well for goodness sake, what does a woman have to do to get a hug?’ she cried, and threw her arms around Bastien. He hugged her back, bending over so that he didn’t pick her off the floor. She drew back and looked at him again.

‘He’s very handsome, dear, you chose wisely’ she said to Sophia, and at last she turned her attention back to her daughter. ‘So, when are we going to the Palace?’ she asked ‘Do we get to meet the King? How well does he know Queen Elizabeth?’ She dropped a curtsy at the name - Sophia laughed and Bastien breathed a sigh of relief that the spotlight was no longer on him.

‘Patience Mum, all in good time. Come on, let’s go to the car’ Bastien took the handle of Edith’s suitcase and lead the way outside to the SUV. Sophia had said that using a limo would be over the top – her mother was so excited about the Palace that it would just be too much for her.

‘Mind if I ride shotgun, son?’ Bob asked ‘The girls can catch up in the back’ Bastien swallowed and forced a smile. It was unnerving that the older man called him ‘son’ just as his former Captain, Jackson Walker had, and he had to make an effort to remind himself that he wasn’t his superior – at least, not in a formal way.

‘Of course, Mr Turner’ The older man frowned slightly

‘Bob please, no need to be so formal, son’ Bastien closed the back after loading the bags. Sophia was already in the back seat making Edith comfortable.

‘I’m sorry Sir – I mean Bob, force of habit with my job’ Bastien replied sheepishly

‘I can understand that, Lykel – or would you prefer your first name?’

‘That’s really up to you, Bob’ he said, forming his lips around the unfamiliar name. ‘Whatever you’re comfortable with.’ He went to open the passenger door and Bob got in with an odd look on his face – scepticism and wariness, Bastien decided. He got in and made sure everyone was belted in before checking the mirrors, indicating and pulling off smoothly. When they had left the airport and were cruising along the main road toward the Palace, Bob patted the dashboard in front of him. He had the impression the older man was watching the way he drove and for the moment he appeared to be comfortable with his proficiency. He felt more at ease driving as it gave him something else to focus on.

‘I’ve never driven one of these beasts’  Bob said ‘What kind of mileage does it do? It can’t be very economical – is it yours?’ Bastien blinked at the barrage of questions.

‘Economy isn’t the most important issue in my line of work’ he explained ‘This is one of the fleet assigned to the Royal Guard. It’s useful because it’s tough and versatile, used for all sorts of jobs including escort duty for the Royal Limousines. Those are specially built, bullet proof and with reinforced chassis to withstand bombs. Most of these vehicles are modified too’ Bob stuck out his bottom lip and nodded sagely.

‘My brother ran a limo business in London’ he said ‘He told me he acquired a car that was used to drive the Prime Minister around – he said it had reinforced steel plating in the chassis like you said.’ He looked off into the distance as they drove ‘I was never sure if he was telling the truth though, he was a bit of a dark horse’ Bastien looked sideways at him, and Bob turned to him again. ‘A vehicle like this isn’t that practical on the island where we live, but some folk have them anyway’ Bastien smiled, making a note to ask Sophia about her Uncle later.

‘I have a Goldwing bike’ he said ‘and King Liam bought me a car in gratitude for my service to the Crown, but I don’t get to drive it much’ Bob looked interested

‘Oh yes – what is it?’

‘Ford Mustang’ Bob’s eyes lit up

‘That’s impressive’ he said ‘Classic or new?’

‘New’ Bastien said ‘I’m sure we can go out for a spin if the weather’s kind to us’

‘Now that I’d enjoy more than staying in a fancy Palace’ he grinned ‘don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful and I know it’s where you live, but I like things plain and simple’ Bastien coughed, embarrassed.

‘I’d really like to move out when the job allows – I’ve brought it up with the King but for now it’s useful for me to be on site. I’ve lived there a long time so it’s a big decision. I can look after myself, but it’s convenient at the Palace – as staff I don’t have to cook or do laundry, and I could have our – uh my… suite cleaned if I wanted’ Despite Sophia being in her late twenties and himself ten years older, he felt self conscious talking about their living arrangements to her father, them not being married – or even engaged.

‘It’s okay son, I know you live together. My girl’s a grown woman and I trust her decisions’ Bob chuckled ‘You don’t have to pussy foot around the issue’

‘Thankyou Sir – I mean Bob…Our suite in the staff wing is quite modern, you won’t be staying in the State rooms, which are quite impressive and ornate. The King was kind enough to extend our living quarters recently, so we have a guest room all set up for you’ They had reached the outskirts of the capital now, and Bastien had to concentrate to negotiate the turns and roundabouts that lead through the middle of the town before they went to the Palace. Bob looked out of the window as the two women continued to chat in the back.

‘I thought you might like to drive through town’ Bastien explained ‘It’s very picturesque, and some time while you’re here we can come in late on to take a look at the Christmas lights’

‘I know Edith would love that’ he replied ‘Though you might have a hard time getting her away from the Palace. She’s hoping for a tour of the entire property if it’s allowed’

‘I’m sure king Liam would be delighted’ he replied ‘He’d most likely conduct it himself’ Edith spoke up from the back, obviously picking up on their conversation after a pause in her own dialogue with her daughter.

‘Did you hear that Sophia?’ she trilled ‘The King himself showing me around – what an honour!’

‘He’s very informal, Mum’ Sophia said ‘I’m sure he’d love to meet you both’

‘Oh well, if he’s not busy – you know, opening Christmas fairs and kissing babies’ Sophia laughed and Bastien couldn’t help but smile.

‘I don’t think the King’s schedule is particularly busy’ he replied. He slowed down ‘We’re almost there Edith, take a look out of your side of the car’ The railings that defined the boundaries of the Palace came into view, and Edith looked out, gasping in admiration at the parkland beyond.

‘How on earth do they keep the grass so tidy?’ she pondered aloud, and in the rear view mirror Bastien saw Sophia’s lips tighten a little.

‘There’s a whole team of gardeners who look after the grounds, Mum’ she said

‘That will be expensive’ Edith remarked ‘Has he thought of having a flock of sheep to graze it?’ He heard Sophia make a soft sound of exasperation, but thankfully Edith fell silent after that. It was a little while before they came to the gates and stopped at the security booth. Parker was on duty and looked in to check that Bastien was at the wheel. A second guard went around the back of the vehicle to open up and check the luggage.

‘Welcome back Sir. I take it this is Mr and Mrs Turner?’ Parker asked with a smile

‘Don’t take it for granted, Parker’ he replied sternly ‘I may be Captain, but you need to double check’

‘Of course Sir, I was about to ask for their ID’ Parker replied, colouring a little ‘If you think it’s necessary’

‘Of course I do, just putting you through your paces’ Edith looked flustered, but Bob reached into his jacket pocket and calmly handed over his and his wife’s passports for the guard to look at. He examined them carefully and handed them back.

‘All seems to be in order, you can go on in’

‘Better safe than sorry, son – you have an important job’ Bob remarked to the guard, and turned back to Bastien ‘I appreciate you not treating us any different from any other first time visitors, Lykel’ he said approvingly ‘I’ve had to deal with Royalty in my time, though not in such a major role as you’ The gates opened, and Bastien eased the car forward along the long sweeping drive toward the Palace.

‘Is that so, Bob?’ he asked, intrigued. Sophia hadn’t talked much about her parents though he knew they were close. It was probably a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’

‘That’s right, the Force has had to organise a few Royal visits over the years’ he replied ‘Edith and myself were invited aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia once – sadly the sea was too rough for the tenders to go out on the day, but it was an honour to be included’

‘Oh yes’ Edith piped up from the back ‘Bob was part of the security detail for the Prince of Wales once – we have a signed photograph of his Highness’ He saw her bob her head a little as she mentioned the British Prince.

‘That’s impressive’ Bastien agreed. He slowed down to give them a good view of the façade of the Palace before continuing around to the side, making for the service entrance and the garages. ‘We can go and take a tour through the main entrance tomorrow, Edith’ he said ‘You must be tired after your journey – we’ll have a little something to eat and you can settle in. We won’t have far to go to our suite from this entrance’ He brought the vehicle to a stop and went round to open the door for Edith. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Drake coming out to the car as Sophia’s mother got out.

‘Sophia!’ Drake called ‘welcome back – are these your parents?’ Edith looked at him, wide eyed and hissed at Sophia

Is this him – do I curtsy?

‘No Mum, this is my friend Drake Walker’ she said ‘I’m sure I’ve told you about him’

‘Oh’ Edith said, deflating slightly ‘Pleased to meet you, Drake’ He leaned in and embraced her briefly before turning to Bob, extending his hand

‘Mr Turner’ he said ‘I hope you enjoy your stay’

‘Thankyou son, it’s a privilege to stay here’ he narrowed his eyes at him ‘You’re not some sort of fancy Duke or Lord are you?’ Drake laughed

‘Lord no, I’m just plain old Drake Walker, just a mister’ he said

‘Drake’s father was head of the Guard before me’ Bastien explained ‘He died in service’ Bob turned back to the younger man

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Walker. Were you tempted to join the guard yourself?’

‘Uh – no Sir’ he said regretfully ‘But Bastien stepped in and helped me and my sister when we lost Dad. I train with him and the Guard, though I’ve never applied to join’ Bob slapped him on the back after an approving look in Bastien’s direction.

‘That’s okay son, it’s a hard thing to do. I’m sure your talents lie elsewhere’ Drake flushed scarlet

‘Um yes, heh – my talents lie elsewhere Sir’ he mumbled ‘Can I take your bags?’ Sophia hid a sly smirk and he winked at her. Edith narrowed her eyes at him, which made him twitch nervously as he reached over to open the back of the SUV for the luggage. He went ahead, and the others followed, Edith keeping up a monologue on everything she saw, admiring or deprecating it as she went. Bob rolled his eyes at Sophia, and Bastien picked up his cane to follow. He had reached his limit after going without it at the airport and he felt a dull ache in his thigh. Bob caught sight of it and raised his eyebrows.

‘Sophia told us you were hurt in an assassination attempt’ he observed as they went inside. Bastien nodded

‘Yes Sir – Bob, my leg troubles me but it’s improving. Sophia takes good care of me’ Bob smiled warmly.

‘From what she tells me it’s a mutual arrangement’ he said ‘I’m glad she’s found someone so protective’ Bastien nodded in answer and had to take up the rear of the group as they ascended the stairs, so it was Sophia who opened the door to let everyone in. Drake deposited the suitcases by the door and left.

Edith swept into the lounge, taking it all in. The table under the window, formerly Bastien’s dining table when it was just his living space, now sported a decorated Christmas tree and there were tasteful tinsel decorations all around the walls, a few Christmas cards displayed on the bookcase and hanging in strings on the wall. The two extra rooms that the remodelling of the suite had given them had been repurposed and the adjoining suite’s bathroom had been split into en suites for their rooms and for Theresa’s on the other side. Bastien’s treadmill and static bike had been put into storage from his makeshift gym in order to make a dining room for the four of them and any other guests they might have. The other room was already a bedroom, but a few pieces of furniture had been added to make things more comfortable for the guests. The lounge still sported a small kitchen area, and Sophia and Bastien’s bedroom and bathroom were accessed from the corridor within the suite, as was his study.

‘It’s a lovely room’ Edith declared ‘and you decorated for Christmas, how wonderful – oh that reminds me’ she rummaged in her bag just as Bastien arrived. Edith pulled a little package wrapped in fabric and ribbon, and handed it to Sophia. Eagerly she took it and opened it carefully. Bastien looked on as she stared at the worn and faded ornament that lay in her hand, her eyes welling up with tears.

‘Oh Mum’ she cried, and threw her arms around her. Bastien cast his eyes toward Bob, who leaned toward him and spoke quietly.

‘It’s the fairy that always goes on top of the tree’ he explained ‘Sophia chose it when she was five. It’s not in the best condition – but Christmas isn’t Christmas without it’ Sophia turned to her father

‘Dad’ she said, her voice catching a little ‘You should put it on top of the tree – just like the first time’ Bob smiled fondly

‘I’m not the man of this house’ he replied and turned to Bastien ‘You do it, son. I’ve only just met you, but Sophia’s obviously made her choice – you should take over the tradition’ Bastien rocked back on his heels and looked to his lover questioningly. She nodded, tears still glistening in her eyes.

‘Please, Bas’ she said quietly ‘Will you?’ He stepped forward and stood in front of her as she held the delicate scrap of wood and fabric and wire out to him. She looked up and he took it from her gently, cradling it gently in his hands and leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. He was aware of Edith looking on with a smile, and Bob moved across the room to put his arm around his wife and squeeze her firmly. He felt a warmth that he had never felt before – of acceptance and affection and love radiating from Sophia and her parents. He swallowed and at last found his voice.

‘I’d be honoured’ he said softly. ‘Thankyou for asking me’

[dreamxsims4]

Let’s Take A Vacay Part Two

With the Trevino Family

But before I start. Tumblr is so fucking unreliable! JEEEE WIZZ.

This is a spin from my Gameplay Day 13. That day we went with the Miller-Wood family to lunch and the pumpkin patch. Then we switched over to the Trevino family, where Quinn pulled the sweetest shit I have ever seen in my game. He takes the family to Sulani, for (he says) Brennan’s sake. This is technically day one, but.... you know day two, day one who cares lol. LEt’s continue shall we 😁.

Lol so we’re in Sulani. And goes who’s an angry drunk?!?!?! I would have never guessed. Michelle doesn't remind me of the raging type, but hey...to each it’s own. She had one lil cheap drink and got angry like the hulk.

Ummm... is there any way for them wear sunscreen? I bought some and it seemed to be only decoration. She also had this stuff but I couldn't get a close enough shot for it to show up....who can show that? The quality was trash.

Hahahahahaha, sleepy Quinn is the best Quinn.  He’s literally the cutest. They spent hours out there so it was reasonable for him to take a lil nap. I was really trying to see some mermaids or dolphins...but nope, only birds.

Amina burned so bad! But that ain’t stop her, she stayed out there for ages and some.

SO yeah, they spent the most of the day relaxing. They had some crabs, hamburgers, grilled chicken, and sweet tea and boy oh boy....

Let’s just say, I am now cooking dinner for myself and also, also, also, buying myself a ticket to the next paradise on earth. (and oooh, it was so good).

Lol Michie was feeling her cramps and I must say, although I know it will upset the angry drunk, Michie......kudos to the creator of the SOL mod!!!!!!! I was like, oh shit what’s wrong with her? She was obviously in pain, plus a moonlet. Yeah, this mod is a beast. Lol and Amina’s reaction!

So things get a lil more social. These sims don’t talk much to each other. They barely talk to Brennan so...idk when they talk I get little impressed.

Lol this nut, Quinn literally got disappointed when the bonfire went out. Quinn is my animal-spirit, I would've cried too Q. It’s no shame.

SEE! Here they go! You cant take these sims, .....( I don't want say it, but here goes nothing.) NO. WHERE. First, of all. They go on a lil midnight swim, Michelle stays home with Brenny and you know, everything is all good. They just chit-chatting, splashing each other in the water and all and boom. Amina wants to take birthing (it did not say that, but I assumed😂) classes. Amina! This is not the baby daddy, Amina! He cant go to birthing classes with you, you are a single mom now, you cant persuade one of your baby father’s to step in for the other! Ugh! Fine, #hennythingispossible, let’s just go to the stupid f*cking birthing class. He took you to Sulani, and to a resort in Sulani, not just some chicken shack, so he might as well take you to your “class”.

And thennnnn, out of absolute, NO. WHERE. Quinn pops a f*cking loopy pill (or in RL, a Xanax or Percocet, or Molly, or whatever tf the kids are on these days). And starts. Tripping. Out.

A few hours later, as the sun starts to rise, these two lovebirds come back to the resort and they must have had that moment. You guys remember in Breaking Dawn (Twilight) when they ran around the island that Edward’s family owned, all damn day and then Bella fell tf out when they got back. Yeah, that moment. The only thing they were missing was the “read more” part lol, and the part where Quinn would own the whole island. Hey, this is the sims, Quinn owns this island. But I guess not because she is definitely, accidentally pregnant with a strange married man’s baby. I’m sure they had fun though, could you imagine the mental space of a woman who has done the unspeakable, invited to enjoy herself despite her struggle that says, “she probably shouldn't”. And a man, who has lost everything, pop a trippy pill in the middle of the ocean in Sulani? Wow, what fun.

This is how I found Quinn around 9 am, knocked tf out in the bathroom outside of the tub he just got out of. He did not even make it to the bedroom two clicks (idek what a click is lol, wow, lolololl that's what she said. lol, mmhmmm *cough*) away from where he is now.

What happened next....? Hm, I guess we’ll find out on...

Let’s Take A Vacay!

Let’s Take A Vacay Part One.

Let’s Take A Vacay Part Two.

Let’s Take A Vacay Part Three.

[echoequinox]

Xion Appreciation Week - Day 2

I’m writing a fic a day for #XionAppreciationWeek, in honor of my favorite and the best Kingdom Hearts character! :’)

I’ll be posting them both here and on AO3. You can find the AO3 fic here, titled “Affection”.

The rest, I’ll put links up as I post new chapters!

Day 1: Remembrance >Day 2: Return Day 3: Separation/Reunion  Day 4: Light/Darkness  Day 5: Ice Cream/Seashell  Day 6: New Beginnings Day 7: No. XIV (Free Day)

She was alive. Amazingly, astoundingly, against all odds, Xion was well and truly alive. She took another sharp breath, the air stale and musty, but it was a breath. Alive. The battle with Xehanort, the Keyblade Graveyard, the “second Keyblade War” as they’d started calling it, had brought her back. Even she didn’t understand how it was possible, but she was here, returned, to the land of the living. This time as her own person.

She’d been to Twilight Town, with the others, back on the clock tower with Axel and Roxas, SaÏx and Roxas’s old friends, from the Other Twilight Town. She’d gone to the beach, gotten to see everyone else - Naminé, the eerily familiar Ventus and his friends, Riku and, eventually, Kairi. They’d said she could stay wherever she wanted: Destiny Islands, Twilight Town, somewhere on another world. She wanted to, really, but she wasn’t… done.

When she’d asked Riku for the favor he looked at her like she was crazy. Then, he explicitly ASKED if she’d gone crazy, and she’d laughed. It took some coaxing, but eventually he had agreed, on the condition that he would come along with her, as an escort, in case something went wrong.

So they walked the dark streets, feet tapping against black pavement, passing darkened windows and glowing signage, more a strange, bioluminescent geographical feature than something man made. It was called Dark City, but it wasn’t a city, really. Nobody lived there, nor had they ever. It was a world created by and for Heartless, a twisted version of the place they’d used to live before their hearts were stolen away by the dark. It always gave her the chills.

“You alright?” Riku asked, noticing her shiver.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” She continued walking, though he moved a bit closer, an instinctive, protective gesture. She hadn’t wanted him to come along, and had told him as much, but now, being here… she was grateful for the company.

He stopped, and it took her a few paces to realize he wasn’t beside her, turning to see what had stopped him. He looked up at a large building, still imposing despite the top missing - a deep, diagonal cut having severed it.

“I fought Roxas here,” he said quietly and she shuddered, nodding.

“I remember.” He gave her a look and she smiled. “They keyblade he threw you. The little flashes of memory. That was me. Or, I guess, what was left of me.”

“Right,” he nodded slowly, turning back to stare at the building.

“Did you two do that?” she smiled, looking to the cut, and he laughed.

“Sora and I, yeah. The fight against Xemnas was… something else.”

“I wish I’d been there to see it,” she sighed. “I’d love to have watched him get what he deserved.” Riku was silent and she shifted uncomfortably for a few moments. “Um, let’s… keep going.” He moved to her side as they started again, heading through streets and alleys, jumping at every movement, Riku ready to summon his blade to fight the Heartless. But none came.

Instead, their walk was silent and tense until they finally reached the edge, a cliff leading down into the nothing below the city, where an enormous pile of ivory rubble rested.

“There it is,” Riku said, as Xion inhaled sharply.

“Yeah,” she nodded. She slowly moved to the edge of the cliff.

“W-wait,” he started, running towards her as she sat down, scooting so her feet were over the ledge. He stumbled to a stop before joining her, sitting and staring out at the remains of the Castle That Never Was.

“So this is it, huh?” she asked softly. “All of Xemnas’s hard work, all of the data, all the hearts we collected. It’s just this big heap of trash, now.”

“I guess so.”

“And Xemnas is the only one who won’t be coming back,” she smiled. “Everyone else gets another chance. Even people like me who never deserved it.”

“Xion…”

“I mean… Like, literally, not… you know, in a ‘beating myself up’ way. I wasn’t a PERSON, Riku, you know that. I was just Sora’s memories of Kairi. Now…” She held out a hand in front of the castle rubble, flexing it. “Now I’m me. I didn’t think I could do that.”

“I’m glad you are,” he laughed and she smiled.

“Me too.” Eventually, her smile fell and she faltered. “What… do people do?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, I’m… new at this. What are we supposed to do now?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he replied, scratching his neck. “I guess we… just sort of wait for the next adventure.”

“You’re not gonna wait,” she smiled, poking him in the side and he laughed.

“No, probably not. Sora could be out there somewhere, hurting, and I want to help him. Once I take you back to wherever you want to go, I was probably going to head out and find him.” She nodded, scooting closer and resting her head on his shoulder. He went stiff for a second, before wrapping his arm around her shoulders.

“I could come too,” she offered. “I don’t… have anything holding me here, and I want to be useful.”

“I think it’s something I have to do myself, Xion,” he said softly and she sighed.

“I know.”

“You’ve got Axel, and Roxas, and Naminé to look after you and help you, though,” he smiled. “Things won’t be that bad.”

“I don’t want to be ‘looked after’,” she replied, frowning. “I want to DO the looking after, or help people somehow, o-or… I don’t know, I want to DO something, Riku. I hate this sitting around.”

“It’s called relaxing,” he teased and she huffed. “You can’t work yourself too hard, Xion.”

“I went on missions all day every day for a year,” she pointed out.

“Didn’t you go into a coma at one point?” She opened her mouth, then scowled.

“Yeah, but… that wasn’t the work’s fault.”

“Sure,” he laughed and she groaned. “Seriously, Xion, you’re alive now, and your own person. Don’t you want to explore that?” She frowned, hugging her arms tight, curling her legs under her.

“I don’t know how, Riku. I don’t… I don’t know who I am. Everybody else seems to just… KNOW. Axel has his life with Saïx, Roxas has his friends and Twilight Town, Ven has Aqua and Terra and his little cat thing. Everyone else has a PLACE. Somewhere they belong, like, their… their own niche. I don’t have a place of my own. I don’t belong in Twilight Town, or Destiny Islands. I belong down there.” She pointed down to the rubble and Riku sighed.

“What about Naminé? She feels out of place too, I bet. The two of you are similar, you could go to her.” She shrugged weakly. “I can’t tell you your purpose, Xion. It’s something you have to find for yourself. Isn’t there anything that you like?” She frowned, brows knitted together as her thumbs rubbed against her arms. She’d been to so many worlds on missions, what did she like?

She liked sea salt ice cream, obviously, but that was more about the people than the dessert. She liked… the desert. Agrabah was nice. It was HOT, but it was nice. She felt like she could get lost there, like no one would notice her in the hustle and bustle of their lives, and she could just live, unnoticed. She liked the eerie feel of Halloween Town, the strange monsters that lived there making her feel more normal and human by comparison. She scrunched her face up, thinking. Wonderland. Beast’s Castle. She liked-

“Flowers?” she said finally and Riku chuckled. “Don’t laugh!”

“Sorry, I just… wasn’t expecting that. Though I guess, with a name like Xion...” She frowned, shoving him lightly and he laughed again. “So, flowers. I dunno, roll with that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can… garden?” he tried. “Like, grow flowers, learn about them, I don’t know.” She frowned.

“I... never thought about that.”

“That can be like… your thing. You can garden, and grow flowers for people, and from there you can figure out who you are. Meeting new people at the… flower store, or whatever.” She laughed, shaking her head. “Even something as simple as flowers can help you figure out who you are, Xion. You just have to be open to it, and looking, and you’ll find it.” She paused, meeting his eyes before moving forward and hugging him tight around the midsection, head on his shoulder as he rested his hand on her head.

“Thank you, Riku. Really. It means a lot that you’re helping me with all of this.”

“I mean I’m not gonna grow the flowers for you,” he laughed, then softer, “but yeah, Xion. Of course.” She held him for a long moment before pulling away, awkwardly scooting down a few inches, eyes returning to the destroyed castle. “You almost ready to go back?”

“Yeah,” she said softly, standing. “Just about.” He stood, then paused.

“Want a little alone time?” She nodded and he patted her shoulder, walking back down the street as she stared into the gaping pit. This had been her home for an entire year. Walking its halls, talking with its residents, doing missions for Xemnas. It was all she’d known. But the second she met someone new, the second Riku stepped into her life, that was all shattered. And for the better. She'd learned about Sora, about where she came from, her purpose in life. And then, she'd rejected it. Fighting back against Xemnas in every way she knew how, and eventually even dying for it. It had felt so good to rebel.

She fished a thalassa shell from her pocket, the last one remaining from her time at the Castle. Roxas had hidden it on some world, some act of preservation that she’d thank him for forever. But now she held it out, outlined against the Castle, taking in the soft pinks and yellows before letting it fall from her fingers, clinking against the street before teetering into the abyss below. The last piece of herself tied here.

She drew in a labored breath, turning to Riku who was trying to pretend he wasn’t watching her, and smiled, giving a soft wave before heading to join him, to leave Dark City. This time, she wouldn’t return. No more RTC. Not ever again.

[chronicbatfictioner]

A Real Boy - Chapter 10

Mythical beasts are supposed to stay in the mythical realms, according to Jason. Especially since they're really not supposed to exist. Like, it looked like someone pulled out a JK Rowling book and conjure the most obscure and ridiculously named creature there was.

"I'm not sure if I have to be more concerned that you actually knew the name and specifications of that creature, or that the..." Jason paused his grumble to actually roll his eyes, "--Snallygaster actually exists and is flying in front of me right now."

"I'm..." Conner visibly gulped. "I know the answer of your question number one, but number two is... yeah. I'm absolutely concerned. It's solid."

"No shit, Sherlock." Jason snapped. "And it went through Rachel's soul-self as if it was simply a fog and dragging Cassie behind it. Shouldn't you be there and help your girl out? Like, maybe to make that thing hold still?"

Conner looked somewhere between mildly offended and mildly... scared. And if Tim wasn't feeling the latter, he would have snickered.

As it was his first return to San Francisco for the guys' weekly hangout was rudely interrupted when they saw a massive snallygaster flying over the city.

"This is not what you meant by 'wishes came true', is it, Jason?" he had to check.

"Oh, goddess! No! You can't wish for a made-up beast to come to life - let alone one as big as that. This is more of a rabbit-out-of-a-cat kind of magick. Only the rabbit has wings and the hat was probably... large." Jason replied. "Hold on..." with the last warning, he finally heeded to Tim's mental request to go and check what the creature was made of so that Tim could rearrange its molecules.

"I should help Cassie," Conner mumbled and flew to where Cassie was digging her heels - quite literally, to stop said creature from causing any more damage to the city blocks in front of it. Bart was busy removing people from its path, literally and physically. Rachel was busy removing people's memory of them, not the beast, per sé. Because it would be easier for her to visualize the five of them and pluck said images out of people's brain than a creature that was sure to make the evening news. State news.

"Okay," Jason was back by Tim's side. He, fortunately, could make himself invisible to non-magickal people and magickal people alike if he wanted to. "that creature was non-organic. He's made of fiberglass."

Tim cocked an eyebrow at him. "Seriously."

"Yep, would you like to taste a feather?" Jason replied, offering a single, arm-length feather to Tim. Without even touching it, Tim realized that it was, after all, fiberglass. He sighed.

"Bart, I need you back here. Cassie, Conner, can you make that thing stop for one second, please? Two at most." Tim called through their communicator link. "I need Bart to make a controlled tornado to amplify my spell."

"Strength." Jason corrected.

"Bzzz, same difference!" Bart exclaimed, already standing by Tim. "Whirlwind it is, you want it to expand just as it hit him, yes?"

"Working on it, and I'm starting to get pissed at it..." Cassie growled. "Kon, make it like that old Star Wars movie and wrap it low!" she ordered. Conner took her lasso, wrap it around the creature's legs, and gave her a thumb's-up sign. Cassie roared, and her eagle familiar screeched to form a bolt of electricity that Tim was sure could fell a few elephants and five rhinos. Still, considering the creature was the size of a six-storey building, it was... only shocked.

But the shock rendered it standing still for just enough time for Tim to channel his magick through the wind tunnel, small tornado that would amplify said magick by laws of physics.

"I hope Cassie's armor is not fiberglass..." Jason quipped, just as the yellow beam of Tim's magick started to envelop the creature. "What are you turning it to?"

"Dust. What else that's not dangerous to the surrounding area?" Tim snapped his reply. "And Cassie's armor was given by the Greek Gods. I don't think they do fiberglass..." he added as an afterthought, as Bart vacuumed the dust and deposited it into Rachel's soul-self, where it would then be teleported to hell or something; just in case it would morph back to the creature and/or endanger anyone who inhaled it.

"Cassie's armor, thankfully, forged through heart of a dying sun and was made from the hide of the Nemean Lion by Hephaestus. So no, magick can't alter it." Cassie replied as she landed by Tim's side. "Good thing it's a hot day. People would think they're heatstroke-ing."

"Yeah," Tim sighed as Conner and Rachel also landed on the same roof he was standing on. "This... yeah, we need to hold a serious meeting, guys - of what Bruce Wayne had offered me."

"Okay," Cassie started, but Bart cut her off before she could say whatever was on her mind.

"This serious meeting will still be held over pizza, yeah?"

"Bart!" Cassie snapped. But Tim hold up his hand.

"Yeah, yeah... Kon, card." Tim reminded. Conner handed the credit card to Bart, who squealed and zipped off even before anyone could say anything.

"Thank goddess I wasn't assigned to that kid... I'd be very, very tired..." Jason quipped.

"I get tired just looking at him go, and I can actually reach his speed..." Conner remarked. "Anyway! This is about the Bruce Wayne meeting last... what was it? Tuesday? Wednesday?"

"Thursday, actually, Conner. You've known me all these times and still don't remember that I only have Thursday afternoon free from classes..." Tim replied dryly.

"What about Bruce Wayne?" Cassie wanted to know. "Diana is frothing about him and I think she has a crush or something. Which is weird because Wayne is like... dense. Not Diana's type at all."

"Rae, can you get us back to the island, please?" Tim prompted. Rachel just nodded, and a thick black smoke enveloped them all. Tim's mind momentarily wondered and analyzed the difference between Rachel's teleportation smoke and Jason's. Jason's was white, thin, breathable, but singeing the eyes due to its lengthy linger. Rachel's smoke was deep black, thick like fog, cold when breathed in, and dissolved within less than two seconds.

"Don't think of how to replicate this smoke, Timmers, it's hell-related." Jason quipped, tapping his forehead gamely.

"I'm not! I'm..." Tim started, but sighed as the outline of the meeting room - a.k.a. the dining table - in their basecamp started to come to focus. "No, not the smoke. I just wondered if... I can't help wanting to know, you know." he told Jason, and Rachel, who looked at him quizzically.

"You have already decided," Rachel remarked, annoyingly able to read Tim's mind. Well, actually, she literally is able to read minds, only that Tim distinctly remembered that he had specifically asked her not to. As Tim glared back at her as she walked toward the meeting table, she blithely replied, "no, Timothy, I did not read your mind. It was there all over your body language." she paused and turned to look at Tim. "Not everything needed demonic mind-reading abilities."

Tim rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine. I have decided for myself, that is. I'm... I've promised that I'm not going to sell the idea to you guys, but merely presenting it. Because I want you guys to decide on your own." he said. "Bart? You good?"

Bart, still on his commlink and probably about halfway to Nevada, commented. "Yup, I'm going to this amazing pizza place in Vegas and... yeah, you keep talking."

"There's a good pizza place in Vegas?" Jason mouthed, and Conner snickered.

"Okay, while we wait for Bart, why don't you start from the top, Tim. I got the feeling that this has something to do with you," Cassie decided, glaring at Jason.

"Hey!" Jason protested. "Well, kind of. But not entirely. It has more to do with Tim."

Tim sat down at the head of the table, inhaled deeply, and began. "Okay, yes. It did have something to do with Jason. But his part was just the push I needed to do something. It - whatever 'it' is - was started with my mom, apparently.

"As you all knew, my mom died while protecting my dad from this... insane voudou man called Obeah Man. But after my visit to Bruce Wayne's place a few days ago, I found out that my mom was not 'just' - quote-unquote - a hero for saving my dad. She was a hero long before that...

"Her job back then was to collect artifacts that are real and dangerous, and switch the ones in museums with fake ones--"

"--woah... a Real-life Lara Croft!" Bart quipped. The whole team, even Jason, groaned.

"Yeeeah, kind of. Only she's not only getting them for personal collection and stuff. Definitely not my family's personal collection. Instead she would send them to the Justice League via Bruce Wayne; where they would then defuse or destroy the dangerous ones. Wayne's job is to generally investigate those who had used or had been known to have owned or used, or has been looking for a specific artifact. He's assisted by the Oracle--" Tim stopped again as there were sudden screeching and slamming sounds coming through the comm-links. "Bart? You okay?"

"Pizza's fine, guys! So am I. I just lost concentration for a bit and almost cause a pileup!" Bart giggled. There was another collective groan. "Hey! The Oracle! I mean, isn't anyone else stoked at that? The All-Seeing Oracle!" he added excitedly. "Did you get to meet them? Can we go meet Oracle?"

Tim sighed, tried to pick up where he'd left off when something else struck him. "Okay, anyway-- wait, why are you so excited about Oracle? You know something I don't?"

"Just the legends!" Bart replied. "That they had singlehandedly dismantled the King Kobra cult without even being seen, and the King Kobra staff is in their hands even before the cult's priests knew it was missing. That the priests swore up and down that it was as potent as before the last time they'd used it, and it was like, a few days before it went missing and there have been no break-ins and whatnot." he ended the sentence as he appeared right in front of them with two large bags of pizza boxes. "Your card," he handed the card to Tim.

"Okay, wow... I mean, I didn't know about King Kobra or whatever that is..." Tim remarked as a massive slice of pizza was placed right in front of him. "Thanks, Jason. I usually would just wait until they get one before getting myself one."

Jason snorted. "From the pace of it, you'd be lucky if you can still snag the mozzarella remnants from the lid." he quipped.

"Hey! Some of us need a lot of calories, alright?" Bart protested semi-lazily as he practically inhaled his third slice.

"Okay, pizza's here. We've eaten. Tim, continue, please?" Cassie prompted.

"Right. Long story short, Bruce told me that he has had us monitored for a while, and knew that we've been trying to defend the city in our way. He offered to train us, especially in the physical aspects of what we do, so that we can be more effective and maybe would cause less property damage.

"The thing is, this came with Jason's warning that the future would be a lot more dangerous for us, the young ones in particular; and more specifically kids like us who are yet to either manifest their magick, or have manifested but did not have a place to train like we do. His argument is that if we can get like, professionally trained; we can be the fodder between the untrained new magis and the older ones and stuff like that. And if we end up facing something we can't handle on our own, we can call them for assistance." Tim finished the last two sentences in quite a record time that, if they weren't used to Bart's speedy speech-pattern, they might not catch on.

But they did.

"So they want us to be the JL's sidekick." Conner concluded.

"Partners," Tim clarified. Conner scoffed.

"Right. Since when would adults see us as equals?" he retorted. "Anyway, why would we need them? Aside of the possible emergency contact and whatnot? We're good on our own."

"I can't disagree with Conner. I mean, I love Diana and Donna with all my heart, but when it comes to mystics, they could be a hella hypocritical." Cassie agreed. "If I hadn't promised I'd keep everybody in check and focused on keeping the lot of us invisible, they'd have barged in here and like, drag me outta here kicking and screaming, probably."

Tim gritted his teeth quietly. Cassie had a point; in spite of her half-sisters being in teams of their own, they tend to be overbearing when it comes to what they perceived as Cassie's 'safety'. Never mind that she was almost as invulnerable as they are, or almost as strong and controlled. Or that she actually has a mother who could educate her on life in general.

"Rachel? Bart?" He tested.

Bart shrugged, "hey, I'm happy as long as I'm with you guys. So whatever the majority goes, I'm going." he replied. At 13, Bart was still significantly younger than they are, and could end up as a liability if he wasn't being fostered by another speedster, Max Mercury, who has a daughter who was older than they all.

"Rachel?" Tim asked.

"I see that Bruce Wayne is not the daft playboy persona he showed off in public. His mind has so many facets and turns that even I couldn't see - likely blocked off by his daimon. But even with my vote, we would be in a stalemate, Tim." Rachel replied in her soft voice. "How about we mull this through the week, and by next weekend, you can present some compelling argument or evidence why we should join them."

"Alright," Tim sighed and started to take a bite of his slice - two slices now, because Jason apparently got impatient and was kind of concerned at the speed of Bart finishing the pizzas.

"Alright, now we go do fun stuff!" Conner decided.

Jason was quiet, and it took way longer for Tim than necessary to realize that the quiet should have been seen as ominous.

[rhysismydaddy]

Goose Chasing - Nessian Fluff

I went back to edit my masterlist and found this... I don’t really know what to say. It’s all humor and fluff, so enjoy!

________________________________________________________________

Nesta rolled over, relishing the warm feel of the sunlight streaming through her window and onto her skin. She stretched her arms over her head and arched her back, moaning as the sore muscles stretched.

Then Nesta reanalysed her situation and shot out of the bed fast enough to make her dizzy.

Cassian is totally going to give me hell for being late, she thought with misery. Her back was sore from their first training session yesterday morning, but she knew it was nothing compared to what she’d be feeling tomorrow.

He’d probably make her run the ten-thousand stairs to the House of Wind out of spite.

Nesta tripped and stumbled her way into her new Illyrian fighting leathers and pulled on her boots. She hadn’t even braided her hair as she threw herself out the door and began to jog down to the training area.

As soon as she was outside, she regretted ever getting up. The newly summer air was hot and sticky and pushed against her will to train, even more so than the thought of seeing Cassian.

No, she told herself. I need to train. I can’t repeat what happened two weeks ago.

Two weeks ago, she’d gotten herself cornered by a drunk. Her smart mouth had earned her a black eye before Cassian had swooped in - literally - and saved her ass.

She forced herself to keep jogging up to where they had trained yesterday. When she reached the fighting pit, she was completely out of breath and in an ever-worsening mood.

Nesta looked around, but Cassian was nowhere in sight. She rolled her eyes. She couldn’t be late enough for him to completely blow her off, could she? As she turned around again, she found a white piece of paper tucked underneath an empty water pitcher, the pitcher shielding the note from the wind.

In Cassian’s unmistakable handwriting, the note read:

Nesta-

Whenever you wake up and realize you’re over an hour late, meet me at Shepard’s Dock.

-Your favorite illyrian

Ten minutes later, Nesta arrived at the dock, a scowl set deep into her face. Training with Cassian was almost unbearable, but making her walk around looking for him like an idiot? It’s like he was asking to get slapped.

Nesta turned the corner, looking for the dark haired male who usually made her life miserable, violent thoughts racing through her head.

She was so caught up in her vision of tackling him and pummeling his face that she didn’t notice someone start walking next to her until she heard a deep voice say with a smile, “You should really be more situationally aware, Nesta.”

The growl Nesta unleashed as she looked as his sensual smirk was unnecessarily aggressive, even to her own ears. Cassian’s smile just grew.

“But we’ll work on that later. Today, you’re taking me to Livleion Island.”

“Take yourself. You know I can’t fly.”

“That I do, Nesta, dear,” Cassian said, resting his hand on the small of her back and making her grit her teeth. “But, since you kept me waiting for an hour and a half, I figured you might as well come and see what I have to deal with.”

They walked down the dock and Nesta began questioning how exactly she was taking Cassian anywhere until she saw the boat.

Raft was a more accurate word.

“We’re paddling all the way there?” Nesta asked, already dreading it.

Cassian smiled, the wind blowing his curly dark locks around his face. “We’re not doing anything. But yes, you are paddling us all the way there.”

Nesta grimaced, remembering the soreness already present in her muscles.

The Illyrian came up behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist. He flared his wings slightly and glided them down to the raft below the dock.

Nesta sat on a bench but most certainly didn’t pick up a paddle. “How exactly is this going to help me not almost get myself killed?”

“It’s not,” Cassian replied, settling down on the bench in front of her. “But I want to work on my tan and get the point about across on how I feel about tardiness. Two birds, one stone, muffin.”

Always true to his word, Cassian sat up and stripped off his shirt, revealing the already tan planes of his chiseled stomach. Summer had officially began only two weeks ago, how was he already tan?

Cassian tucked his black wings in tight behind him so they didn’t touch the water and closed his eyes.

They still weren’t moving.

“You’re making me even more late, Nesta.”

Nesta was too distracted thinking about the easy way her name rolled off Cassian’s tongue to even fathom the thought of paddling. The tongue that flicked over his bottom lip as it curled into a smirk.

“Having dirty thoughts over there, Nesta?” Cassian asked, his now-open eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Oh, shut up, you big oaf.”

He huffed a laugh but sat back, stretched his huge arms behind his head, and closed his eyes again.

Nesta rolled her own and picked up the paddles. How bad could it be?

Two hours later, Nesta was cursing whoever decided to skip a pregnancy tonic and conceive Cassian. She couldn’t even see an island in sight and mother’s tits her back was hurting.

She wondered if he had her paddling towards some non-existent piece of land, and was about to ask him when, off in the distance, she saw a tiny speck of green.

That had to be it. Or else Nesta was pushing Cassian, who’d been asleep for the past two hours, into the sea and turning around.

Nesta sped up, invigorated with the thought of almost being done.

However, she soon found the male in front of her too distracting. She glanced at the dark swirls and lines covering the entirety Cassian’s chest and arms. Nesta had to physically shake her head to clear the thoughts of running her fingertips along those lines. His eyes were closed, mouth slightly open, and breathing even. She stopped paddling and leaned closer, trying to tell if he was actually asleep or had been faking it the entire time.

She saw his wing move and hadn’t fully registered the movement until she felt cool water splash her right in the face.

“Keep paddling,” he said, not even opening his eyes.

Nesta growled, muttering about heavy, winged beasts making her life complicated as she started paddling again.

Thirty minutes later, Nesta slowly paddled them up to a small beach and an even smaller dock. Livleion Island turned out to be a small, overgrown island with no buildings or people in sight.

“What exactly do you have to do here?” Nesta asked.

Cassian sighed, gracefully stepping out of the boat and onto the dock. He held out a hand that Nesta ignored and said, “I have to catch a goose.”

Nesta saw red and didn’t think before shoving Cassian with all her might over the edge of the dock.

Luckily for him, his wings snapped out and caught him, his feet dangling below him as he suspended himself mid-air.

“You had me paddle your heavy ass out here for a goose?” Nesta shouted at him, looking for something to knock him out of the air so she could properly pummel him. She leaned over the dock, surveying her prospects and settled on the paddle.

She stood back up and swung widely, missing Cassian by barely an inch. He laughed loudly, throwing his head back as Nesta swung again. He flew straight at her, making her jump to the side to avoid collision.

“I said you get to see what I have to deal with. This is what I’m dealing with today. Mor decided she wants a pet goose, and since her birthday is next week, she’s getting a gods-damned goose.”

Nesta dropped the paddle into the boat and rolled her eyes. “You all are so stupid.”

“I find that offensive,” Cassian said, landing on the edge of the dock cautiously.

Nesta looked to the sky and tried not to roll her eyes again. “Well, since you’re my ride home, let’s go find a goose.”

Cassian smirked, his eyes shining, and smoothly replied, “Feel free to ride me anywhere, and anytime, you like, Nesta dear.”

“Don’t make me get the paddle again, Cassian.”

His smirk only grew. “So that’s what you’re into, huh?”

Nesta huffed in annoyance and stomped off into the forest, Cassian’s laughter following behind her.

The pair ended up finding and trapping a goose rather easily.  

“I’m only flying us back if you hold the goose,” Cassian told Nesta an hour later.

Nesta laughed soundly and asked, “What? A five hundred year old ‘warrior” she asked, using air quotes, “is afraid of a goose?”

He scoffed but kept his distance from the goose in Nesta’s arms as he scooped her up.

The flight back took significantly less time than Nesta’s paddling, and was infinitely more fun for Nesta. 

“How can you be scared of him?” she’d asked innocently. “Look at his little face!” She brought the goose close to Cassian’s neck, sliding the feathers along his skin. 

He’d cursed her soundly and threatened to drop her and “that gods-damned monster” into the sea if she did it again, making her cackle with laughter. 

When they landed back on Shepard’s dock, Cassian slowly took the goose from Nesta, grimacing when it quacked at him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, his full lips curving into a grin. “Right at sunrise.”

________________________________________________________________

Thanks for reading! Feel free to drop prompts/asks in my box.

[otnesse]

Been banned by ****IrisHatersSay simply for disagreeing with her on May and Misty, but will still reply to her points anyways, merely out of obligation.

“Oh my God.  You really don’t know when to stop talking, do you?”

Well, gee, considering the entire point of a discussion is to continue talking, yeah, I don’t know WHEN to stop.

“Okay, I guess we’re back to equating skill development with character development.  And the Johto stretch just wasn’t good.”

The Johto stretch may have been excessive, but at least THAT had actual lasting results that carried over into the next saga, such as Ash beating Gary, not to mention advancing to top 8, which even if we don’t count his win at the Orange Islands is still a major improvement compared to in Kanto where he barely made Top 16 (and for circumstances beyond his control, namely Team Rocket abducting him). AG, on the other hand, literally had by its end May being replaced with a girl who shared the EXACT same goal as her, rendering her arc pointless in the end, had Ash winning Top 8 AGAIN, and even when Ash did end up gaining the one actual accomplishment for that saga, beating the Frontier Brains, not to mention beating Brandon’s Regice with Pikachu single-handedly, the whole accomplishment got treated as a joke by Gary (who beat Pikachu with Electivire despite Gary pretty much being retired from training by that point), not to mention Paul twice (and both times with explicitly rookie Pokemon).

“Nah, the kindergarten teacher argument is still dumb.  Pokémon trainers are more like parents to their Pokémon.  They raise Pokémon.  And May was still not an abuser.”

If a parent outright ends up HATING the profession of child-raising and child-rearing, they aren’t fit to be a parent, period. Doesn’t matter if they’re abusers or not. Though that being said, it does tend to outright lead into abuse if they hate the child. Just look at Lois Griffin, hated Meg her eldest daughter, and was very abusive towards her.

“Okay, so you didn’t watch AG.  Let me pull out my meme.”

Just because I didn’t watch AG doesn’t mean I didn’t look up various stuff like episode summaries/synopses and getting a gauge on the episodes via trivia sections and or other things. I usually use those as compensation for when I don’t watch a series myself. Second-hand knowledge, if you will. Besides, just because you’ve watched something directly doesn’t mean you’re actually right. Thomas Jefferson personally witnessed the events of what would become known later on as Bastille Day while acting as the American Ambassador to France, and he ended up being completely wrong in his assessment of the French Revolution, singing praises for the Jacobin murderers (ironically, John Adams, who never actually set foot in France at all during that time, had a far more accurate assessment of what that event would result in, being ahead of the curve compared to even his fellow Founding Fathers’ assessments, let alone Jefferson).

“Also, reacting differently to stressors in your environment is true.  Everyone does not have the same DNA code.  I’m pretty sure psychologists are aware of this, genius.”

Of course people don’t have the same DNA code (well, barring maybe identical siblings, but even there, there’s slight variances), but that doesn’t mean people can’t have similar reactions. As far as psychologists, considering psychologists literally convinced my cousin that she was gay just because she had slight trouble with men (something which my mom, who actually HAD psychologist training from trying to train for nursing, was aghast at), I have zero reason to trust them at their word regarding that bit. Besides, even if that were true, it doesn’t change the fact that she outright hated the Pokemon Training profession at the start, which is STILL inexcusable.

“Suffering is not a competition.  This is not the Suffering Olympics.  And for the record, May and Norman’s relationship did appear to have quite a bit of emotional distance and strain in it.  If you actually watched AG, you’d probably know that.”

At least Norman’s actually IN her life, and not as a deadbeat dad, and at least she HAS an actual loving family to go to, unlike Misty and Brock, who were abandoned by their parents and in the case of Brock pretty much was forced to act as the closest thing they had to a parent until Flint came home, and had to endure fairly abusive siblings in Misty’s case. No matter how much emotional strain there might have been between May and Norman, it’s still nothing compared to outright abandonment (and not even “abandonment to protect your child and/or not deal with bad memories of a rape” kind of abandonment, but more “screw you kid, I’m not dealing with you anymore” kind of abandonment due to Misty and Brock regarding the Gym’s difficulties), to say little about outright abuse, and you know it. Now, if Norman and Caroline treated her like Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia Dursley did to Harry Potter by barely feeding scraps from the table, forcing him to sleep in a cupboard under the stairs up until his first year in Hogwarts (and even THEN, only out of a failed attempt at preventing the Owls from delivering Harry’s acceptance letter), and even doing stuff like outright starving him or locking him up for various reasons, heck, even deeply considering feeding him to Dementors, THEN you might have a point regarding how May’s interactions with her parents were a lot worse than Misty and Brock’s were, not to mention actually warranted.

“Liking a certain type of female character does not mean you are not a misogynist.  A lot of sexist dude bros like certain female characters.  Doesn’t mean they’re not misogynists.”

The literal definition of misogyny is “hatred of women”. I’m pretty sure true misogynists would outright HATE a woman simply for BEING a woman at all, not caring about her personality or character. Want a real misogynist? Look at General Blue from Dragon Ball: https://youtu.be/_wyt1Aq6hm8 Also Chi Fu from Mulan. THAT’S what an actual misogynist acts like, where they can’t so much as even STOMACH being six feet from a girl, being revulsed by them (not fearful of them, just disgusted with them).

“And May did receive good development.  A narrative direction you don’t like ≠ bad writing.”

Actually, it is bad writing, and I would have said it was bad writing even if I DID like the narrative direction/character. I said the same thing about Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Beast’s development earlier, and in case you’ve forgotten, unlike May, I actually LIKED Beast as a character. 

“Nope, the Bible was still written by men.  God was not sitting up in Heaven with a typewriter and poof it down to Earth.  And yeah, let’s glorify how Christians committed genocide in order to convert people.”

We didn’t commit genocide in order to convert people. As far as the Bible, it was written by God, and handed down to us. It was certainly not written by men. Use your head, if it were written by men, and had biases from fallable people like men, don’t you think Jesus Christ, the Son of God, would have made sure to, I don’t know, outright destroy any passages that tarnish God’s view on things, and do so in a very public manner I ought to add?

“Also, Sodom and Gomorrah is NOT about homosexuality.  It’s about hospitality.  If you weren’t an awful person, you’d know that.  And while we’re on this topic, homosexuality is not a sin.  Comparing references to homosexuality in the Bible and what we think of being LGBT in modern times is like comparing apples and oranges.  First of all, you are blatantly ignoring historical context.  The homosexuality referenced in the Bible is outlawed because of its connection to pagan rituals.  There is nothing to even suggest that two people of the same gender who happen to be in love is bad.  Being trans is also fine.   Trans men are men, and trans women are women.”

1. Regarding the first part, those mob of men who came over to Lot’s house to interact with the two men who arrived (actually angels of God) certainly were acting very “hospitable” to them, considering they were trying to make them sleep with them. Or maybe I should quote the specific passage for you just so you realize that hospitality was far from the reason for its destruction: “The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. 2 “My lords,” he said, “please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.”“No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.”3 But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. 4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”9 “Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.10 But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. 11 Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.12 The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, 13 because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.”14 So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry[a] his daughters. He said, “Hurry and get out of this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city!” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.” Genesis 19:1-14. Does that REALLY sound like they were inhospitable to you?

2. Homosexuality IS a sin, actually. Aside from Sodom and Gomorrah as listed above, not to mention Leviticus 18:22, even the likes of Jesus’ apostles, with Jesus’s own blessing mind you, outright said that homosexuals are among those who are barred from heaven. And what’s in the past affects the present, since God’s law does NOT change (well, save for maybe dietary restrictions and/or mixed fabrics).

3. Actually, being trans IS bad. In fact, Deuteronomy 22:5 even explicitly states it’s outlawed to a man to wear a woman’s outfit and a woman to wear a man’s outfit.

“Also, there’s plenty of misogyny in the Bible.  And the Bible condones slavery, too.  Do you think that’s alright, too?”

The Bible’s reference to slavery actually referred to indentured servants or, you know, people holding jobs. If anything, God also didn’t like the kind of slavery you alluded to since... well, the Book of Exodus made that much very clear.

“Homosexuality is not a choice.  This has been proven before, you’re just a bigot.”

Homosexuality IS a choice, and even if it wasn’t, it’s a mental disorder, which means it needs to be cured. And that “proof” was homosexuals outright intimidating the APA into removing it from the list of disorders. It’s like saying psychopathy is not a problem just because it got removed from the DSM book while disregarding that it only got removed because psychopaths actually intimidated the guys writing the book into removing it. There’s even a term for it, “zapping the shrinks”, and in fact, the guy most instrumental in getting it removed,  Frank Kameny, outright admitted they got it removed due to outright intimidating them, or to quote him, “ At that point they were afraid to say no to us. So they said yes. “.

“Also, people often later discover they’re not the gender or sexuality they thought they were, so jot that down.  That’s not “choosing”, that’s self-discovery.  And please, characters are hardly ever confirmed as straight.  You just think they are because it’s the norm.”

When previous seasons or comics or what have you depicted the characters as actually dating, heck, even marrying the opposite sex without any indication of NOT being attracted to them, it’s pretty obvious they were in fact straight. “Self-discovery” is a stupid excuse to force a character to change. And for the record, the only reason my cousin became a lesbian was because a psychologist outright said that she was that just because she had some trouble with dating men, and my own mom was upset at the whole thing when she learned of it. And just as an FYI, it’s actually pretty common for homosexuals to become homosexual due to being molested by a sexual predator. It happened with George Takei, and it happened with the guy who founded the so-called “LGBT rights”, Karl Ulrichs. They even admit it, though aren’t willing to confront that they were in fact molested.

“And “ex-homosexuals”??? Either a) they found out they weren’t gay, or b) were victim to conversion therapy.  For the record, conversion therapy is abhorrent and should be outlawed.”

I am of the opposite view, that homoseuxality needs to ultimately be cured. Besides, considering the lifestyle has several maladies associated with it, not just STDs, but even being more prone to infections, it’s pretty clear it’s ultimately for their sake to do conversion therapy on them. Besides, what makes you think that the gay person DOESN’T want conversion therapy? What if said gay person actually REQUESTS conversion therapy? Should you refuse him?

“As for that CDC bullshit, homophobic studies don’t count.  And it’s literally well-documented that the healthcare issues LGBTQ people face is because of homophobia and transphobia.  You can even google this.”

Considering Google has been busted for trying to manipulate search results recently, I don’t think that telling me to do so is really good enough proof. Besides, I’m going by actual medical statistics posted by the CDC.

“Also, you can’t use the d slur if you are not a lesbian yourself.  If you do, you’re a lesbophobe.”

N-word priviledges, eh? Well, I never bought that. My idea is, if it’s bad for one to use that word, it’s bad for ALL people to use it, yes, even lesbians. And quite frankly, God already made it clear that homosexuality is a sin, multiple times, including in the New Testament, so whether I am a lesbophobe (that’s a new one) or not is ultimately irrelevant.

“And for the record, I’m not left-wing, and I certainly don’t support communism.”

Really? Because you sure are sounding like you do. And for the record, most leftists DO support homosexuality. Just ask Sartre and Foucault.

"You realize there are other choices between communism and capitalism, right?”

No, actually, there are not. Even Socialism is the same as Communism.

“And I don’t support misogynists, even if they aren’t conservative.”

It’s pointless since you probably won’t read this anyways, but prove it. Walk the walk instead of just talk the talk, to borrow an old cliche. Actually condemn the examples I listed of leftists doing that.

“And Pro-Life does NOT mean you’re not a misogynist. You literally don’t think women can do what they want with their own bodies.  And you apparently think a women should have to carry her rapist’s baby, so yeah, you’re a misogynist.”

First of all, Pro-life means defending the baby’s life, which is the most defenseless individual out there. When you’re literally advocating for abortion, you’re advocating for child murder, and what does that make you? Besides, rapists also can demand an abortion just to get rid of any evidence to their rape, so it’s actually disingenous to claim that rapists would want to keep the baby alive. Besides, there’s a little thing called “adoption”. Just because the baby is carried to term doesn’t mean the mother must raise that baby if it was conceived by rape. If she doesn’t want to deal with the fact that she was raped, she can always place the baby into adoption. In fact, NCIS actually dealt with that bit with the character Jack Sloane (and despite the name, Jack’s a woman, a biological woman at that. Jack stands for Jacqueline in this case.). She was raped in college while drunk, yet she still carried the baby to term, and despite clearly loving her newborn daughter, nevertheless put her into adoption largely because she really couldn’t deal with the painful memories of the rape. Ayame from Dead or Alive was a similar case, genuinely loving her daughter Ayane, despite the fact that she existed because Raidou raped her one night. Didn’t have an abortion, but put her into adoption largely thanks to her husband Shiden. And what if the woman DOESN’T want the abortion at all? Besides, the Suffragettes such as Susan B. Anthony were also against abortions, and if anything, they specifically stated that men would use abortions to keep women dependent on men.

“And “let autism define you”…I’m autistic.  And upapologetically so.  So, apparently you just have some internalized ableism.”

Yeah, I have autism as well, and unapologetically as well. But I don’t use it as a crutch (in fact, rarely see the need to reference it specifically to avoid using it as an excuse), so no, I don’t have internalized ableism.

“That’s not what a Pokémon Stylist is.  Serena was a Pokémon Performer.   Pokémon Stylists got their own episode in DP.  See, this is why you shouldn’t try to complain about shows you don’t watch.”

Fine, I stand corrected there. However, after looking it up on Bulbapedia after you mentioned that it’s not the same as Pokemon Performers, it nevertheless made it VERY clear from various characters such as Paris and Hermione that they were similar to Pokemon Coordinators, and in fact, Paris even specifically stated it was a subset of Pokemon Coordinators, so my point about their similarities still stands right there.

“Lmfao, did you really just play the whole “you’re the real bigot” card??? I’m not a bigot for having no tolerance for intolerance.  There is NO REASON I should tolerate intolerance.  YOU are still the bigot.  A bigot is someone who holds prejudice against other groups, such as LGBTQ people, women, people of color, people with disabilities, etc.  YOU fit that bill, especially considering your hatred of LGBTQ people.”

Oh really? Because you seem to be intolerant towards straight people, christians, and all of those types of people, or any traditionally minded women as well. Like an SJW in other words. And for the record, it doesn’t matter what I myself think, what matters is what God thinks since He is in charge of everything. Besides, according to the dictionary, a Bigot is “obstinate and unreasoning attachment to one’s own beliefs and opinions, with intolerance of beliefs opposed to them; also acts or beliefs ensuing from such a condition”, which if anything describes you to a T. At least I make sure to take into account any mistakes I made and admit I’ve made some mistakes in my prior analysis when you point them out (case in point, the bit about Serena having a Stylist goal).

“And people can learn things from another person in ways that don’t involve giving pointers, genius.”

The entire POINT of learning involves being given pointers. That’s even why School exists, not to mention why parents tend to teach their kids life skills.

“I really hope you wake up someday and become a better person, but I doubt you will.”

What you’re acting like is not what God defines as a better person.

“Have fun being an awful and hate-filled person.”

Seriously? I’m the one who at least gave you a chance to talk, and even corrected bits of my analysis that were mistaken. You refused to correct yourself for anything like that. Not to mention you tended to rely on insults and SJW talking points. If anything, you’re the awful and hate-filled person. Nice projection, BTW. And fine, was getting tired of you anyway.

[fangirlfanwritings]

Jon Snow x Baratheon!Reader Part 5

Hello! Could you write a Jon Snow imagine with the Baratheon Reader based on the last episode? Where she went with him beyond the wall and when he gets hurt someone literally has to pull her onto Drogon because she doesn't want to leave him behind? And then her seeing him arrive at the wall?

Could you write a Jon snow x baratheon reader where the northern lords argue that she should stay in winterfell when Jon goes to dragonstone cuz she's his queen but she says she's going and jon's like "I know better than to try to stop her"?

Omg please write a Jon Snow imagine with the Baratheon reader based on tonight's episode!! Especially about him getting hurt and stuff

please please please write a jon x baratheon! reader based on episode 6!!

Baratheon reader taking care of Jon after he gets hurt?

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

AN: Love for this mini series has been incredible thank you all sooooo much!!

When your feet hid the snowy ground of East Watch you felt a sigh of weird relief. You were back in the North and you were one step closer to being home and bringing peace to the world. You took a deep breath of the cold Northern air and continued inside.

You sat around the table with your good friend Tormund and the others telling them of the mission you faced over the wall. Tormund insisted on going, Gendry was ready for a war he couldn’t possibly imagine, Jorah was ready to get back to his Queen and Davos was staying back. “We’ll need more men,” you added.

So you ended up in the dungeons where the men had turned to boys and arguing over things that had long ago stopped mattering. “We are all on the same side,” you husband commanded. “Because we are all still breathing.” The men were let out of the dungeon and Jon spoke again. “Go get ready. But on all the furs you can and grab your weapons.” You, Jon, and Tormund stood in the common room getting ready.

“Are you sure you want to be coming out here Y/N,” Tormund asked. “It’d be better for you to head back to your castle.”

“You know the fighting that happened when Jon said he was going to Dragonstone? All the Lord hollard and whined like children. Then when I said I was going too they acted as though I was their mother, telling them they’d never eat again. They fought hard, trying to get me to stay. What did you tell them Jon, when they told you to stop me?”

“I know better than to try and stop her,” he grinned.

“When we married we vowed to have each other’s backs, always. Where he goes, I go. So if he goes beyond the wall as do I.”

The group of you left the safety of the wall and faced the cold storm on the other side. The snow was deep, the air was cold, and Gendry looked wide eyed over the scene in front of him. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“I’ve never seen snow before,” Gendry beamed.

The hard journey continued and you continued trekking through the snow. “What are you smiling about,” you asked your husband who seemed zoned out as he looked at the white horizon.

“The first time we met,” he told you. “We were out here the first time I first saw you.” The loving look in his eye was overwhelming.

“It’s a bear,” you heard and the moment was ruined.

“A big one.”

“...Do bears usually have blue eyes?” You swore as you realized what that meant and took out your sword. The undead beast plowed over the members in your group and even got a hit on you as your blade went towards its head, sending you flying to the side. Once it was lit aflame and finally killed Beric pulled Thoros to the side and stopped his wound from bleeding.

The group continued on more cautions than ever. “That’s it,” the Hound’s voice interrupted your moment. “That’s the mountain I saw in the flames. A mountain shaped like an arrow’s head.”

“We’re close. Let’s keep going.” The hike started uphill and as you reached the top of the hill a noise reached your ears and Tormund halted the group. The noise seemed to get louder and everyone peered over the side rocks. A White Walker was walking passed with a group of the dead and your group got ready to pounce on the prey.

The fighting started quick and you went after the dead as Jon tackled the Walker. You cut down the dead and, just as you went to slide the arm off of the men holding Jorah’s neck, they all collapsed, except the one. You looked over and saw that Jon had taken down the White Walker.

Instead of dwelling on that you and the men automatically circled the last remaining walker and entrapped him. He yelled out a mighty screech and you realized his move after it was too late. The things mouth was covered and you and Jon looked up and watched as a low cloud of snow and ice came towards you.

“Gendry, run to East Watch. Get a raven to Daenerys, tell her what’s happened. Y/N, you must go with.

“No, I’m not leaving you.”

“You two are the fastest.”

“Gendry can make it himself I’m not leaving you,” you shouted.

“We don’t have time for this, I don’t want to lose you.”

“Then you better keep me close.” A moment of understanding passed you and he gave Gendry the look, sending him off towards the Wall.

Your group ran towards the clearing trying to get into the mountains but as you hit the clearing the sound of cracking stopped you. “Stop,” you yelled and everyone stopped in place. You looked back and saw an army of dead running for you.

“Go,” Jon yelled and you all took off, running to beat the ice and the dead. You and Jon reached the island of rock first and watched as the dead circled you. You two pulled your weapons and got ready. The weight of them was too much though and you watched as the frontmen fell below the ice. The siege stopped and you were safe...for now.

******

The light was coming up again and you paced around the small rock. You stopped by Tormond and looked at the dead he watched. “Remember what I said was the best way to keep warm?”

“Yes,” you chuckled. “Forgive me if Jon and I aren’t in the mood to give you a show my friend.”

“Who said anything about Jon. I’m cold too,” he cracked a smile and you pushed his shoulder. You walked back over to your husband and coiled your arm around his.

“Your Wildling chief is putting the moves on me.”

His eyes never left the ring of the lake. “I wish you would have gone with Gendry.”

“Don’t worry, gingers aren’t my type.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he looked down at you. “You shouldn’t be here. You should be at the Wall. Safe and away from this.”

“I vow to never leave your side, no matter the challenges we might face. I promise to have your back and love you till death,” you recited the vows you had said to him during your wedding ceremony. “I meant everything I said that day.”

“As did I,” he lowered his forehead to yours and closed his eyes, trying to find peace. The sound of the Hound knocking the jaw off a walker caught your attention and you gave a small giggle. He picked up another rock and threw it but this time it came up short and you watched as it skidded over the ice...the ice that was reformed and ready for battle.

“Shit,” you cursed and got your blade out. The walkers began charging and the battle broke out. You tried to fought them off, you really did try, but you quickly saw that this fight was going to be lost. You saw Tormond hit the ice and you ran forward to get him. As you ran to his aid a loud roar erupted and you watched as fire from the dragons lit up the dead. You cut down those remaining on Tormond and grabbed his furs, pulling him back towards the men.

Two of the other’s grabbed Tormond and dragged him towards Daenerys and Drogon. You went back to fighting and only looked up as you heard the mighty yell of a dragon. The Night King had sent a spear to the heart of one of Daenerys children and you watched as they hit the ice and sunk.

“Jon,” you yelled. “We have to go.” When his eyes met yours you knew what he was going to try. “No,” you said more to yourself the first time. “No,” you yelled this time. Jon gave you a sad look before yelling back, “I love you.” He turned and charged towards the Night King.

“No!” You went to run towards him but the Hound’s arms wrapped around you. “No, let me go! Jon!” But no yelling could get you off the back of the dragon and out of the Hound’s arms. Daenerys took off and you watched mortified from above; tears freezing to your cheeks as you watched Jon get dragged under the ice. And in that moment you felt your heart turn to stone.

******

You looked out over the Wall with a blank face and heart. You heard the crunch of snow as Daenerys approached. “I fell in love with Jon right here on this wall,” you told her. “We were at Castle Black and he was stationed on duty. We had quickly connected when I reached the wall but that night I made my way up on top the wall for the first time and sat with him. We sat up and talked until the sun peaked over the white land and we knew, from that moment on, that we’d be stuck together.” A tear ran down your cheek as you spoke those memories out loud.

“The night we were married we promised, in front of the Gods and everyone, that we’d never leave each other’s side. I left his side today. I watched as he was forced under water and I broke my vow to him.”

“You didn’t have a choice,” she reassured. “He wanted you to go. The Hound took you away...I took you away. You didn’t leave his side.”

“Do you remember Sir Davos saying he took a dagger to the heart?” She nodded. “He’s not one for the theatrics. Jon was murdered by the men he called his Brothers and the Red Priestess brought him back. Those were the worst days of my life...watching his lifeless body lay on a table with a sad wolf at my feet. After he was brought back I pictured the next time I’d have to deal with his death, and convinced myself we’d be old and grey; surrounded by our children and our children’s children, and even maybe their children. Yet...here I am.” You turned to leave the wall after a final glance at the true North. “If you’ll forgive me. I have to get back to Winterfell.” You were less than 3 feet away when you heard the horn.

You turned and looked over the wall, your hands gripping the cold wall. A black horse was running as quick as it could towards the wall with a frozen white ball of fur on it’s back.

You ran as fast as you could and found yourself on the ground running towards the men that had gathered around the horse. You pushed them to the side to see him for yourself. “Jon,” you breathed.

“He’s alive,” Davos said. The group of men worked together and loaded him onto the ship you had taken to East Watch. You stood in the corner of the room frozen as you watched the men pry the frozen futs from Jon’s body. The torso you knew so well was covered in new cuts that matched the one he had healing over his heart. Once the cold clothes were taken off he was wrapped in blankets and there was nothing to do but wait.

You found yourself in a seat at the foot of his bed and waited, adding blankets when the compulsion pulled at you. You were memorizing every detail of his face for the thousandth time when your eyes met his now open ones. Tears automatically sprang from your eyes and a large grin covered your face.

“Hi,” he gave you a small smile.

“Hi,” you choked out between tears.

He took your hand in his, “Why are you crying?”

“Because I was so worried that I’d never see you again.”

“Guess I’m not that easy to kill,” he tried to make light.

“King Jon Snow, Warden of the North, Beater of Death,” you announced. “That’s what they shall call you now.” You brushed the curls from his face and rested your hand against his cheek. “Do you need anything? Ale, food, more blankets? I should get Daenerys, she wanted to talk to you. And I’ll have to check your bandages,” you went to get up from the bed but as you pulled away Jon pulled your hand.

“I am feeling a little cold.”

“I’ll get you more blankets.”

“No,” you didn’t understand. “I’ve heard the best way to warm up is from the heat of another.” He used what must have been all of his strength and pulled you back to the bed. “Forget the world for a second and lay with me.” You slipped out into your under clothes and slid down by his side under the covers, putting your head on his chest and an arm around him.

“Don’t you ever do that again to me Jon Snow. The next time you try and get yourself killed we better be old and grey or I’ll kill you myself.”

He rested his head on top of yours, “I vowed to stay by your side and that’s what I’ll do.”