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oranharple · 1 year ago

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"Passion" - An Original Short Story

You can listen to an audio recording of myself reading the story on my YouTube channel, right here: https://youtu.be/I41SApi9Xb8

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I tugged at the collar of my dress shirt and pulled at the tie wrapped snug around my throat. I've always hated ties, and it certainly did not help that it was the same set of church clothes that I had been wearing for the last half a decade. It wasn't so much the issue that we couldn't afford better clothes, because we could. Mom even suggested stopping by the store to grab another outfit, but we were already running late as it was. It wasn't even an issue last time I came to church. However, it had been a while since then, and since leaving for college I had bulked up a bit in some areas.

Mom noticed this struggle of mine and subtly jabbed her elbow into my side. It was her usual way of wordlessly conveying the message, "Stop making yourself look like a fool during the sermon!" I whispered something about perhaps taking my tie off, at least, which she responded by sucking her teeth and tossing her head to the side, her way of wordlessly saying, "Go ahead, if you want to embarrass me in front of all my bingo friends." I kept the tie on, and suffered through it.

● ● ●

I had left for college that previous summer. It was the first time I had been away from my family for an extended period. I recall my mom crying in the passenger seat and Dad practically throwing my suitcase into the dorm room. Meanwhile, Kristen was acting as my shadow. I was initially annoyed by her following me and her pressing questions: "What is this box for?" "Do you have this place all to yourself?" "Are you going to get a girlfriend?" But, after several minutes I came to appreciate her company. I understood that she was just unknowingly mimicking my own behavior from when both James and Simon went off to college. Perhaps it's just a rite of passage all younger siblings must accomplish.

"Clothes." "No." "I don't know."

My siblings and I have always been close– difficult to keep in line and constantly at each other's throats, but close nonetheless. We all drove our parents wild as children, but that's kind of what you sign up for when you have more kids than adults in the house. They could have stopped at me, and everyone was convinced that they would, but then they had Kristen. My brothers and I joked that our parents would've kept trying for a girl until they got one, and maybe we weren't too far off.

I can't imagine wanting that many children– not in the modern age at least. I get the old mindset of children dying young or wanting a bunch of sons so they can pass on the father's name or whatever, but all that just feels so archaic.

I was ten when she was born. No longer the baby of the family, which made me a little happy. The heightened pitch to my mother's tone that she directed at me ended almost immediately after she saw Kristen for the first time. That was nice, but it also meant that I no longer had that unconditional praise and affection that only a baby sibling can have. I actually had to work for that stuff. I had expectations to meet, achievements to work toward, and a completely new identity to discover.

I stood in my new room and arranged objects on my desk from an old cardboard box that had been in the attic for years– if not decades– before we stuffed them full of my own belongings. Kristen sat on my bed, occasionally asking me questions about my upcoming life. Eventually my hand gripped a leather-bound tome. Hefty from the pages inside, but even more so from the words printed in each chapter. I withdrew it from the box. My Bible. The Bible. The only one I knew, at least. I gripped the spine in such a way that, had my fingernails been longer, they could have possibly pierced the skin of the binding.

I placed the book on my desk, right next to my bed. Kristen looked at it for just a moment before turning her head to face me. Her eyes glistened in the warm summer light refracting from the nearby window overlooking the neighboring parking lot. I watched her mouth slowly open, as if the thought was lodged in her throat and she had to cough it out.

"I'm hungry."

● ● ●

I watched as they drove off. It was a very surreal experience; I felt this sudden emptiness in my stomach. The dread of loneliness swelled up within my chest and I just stood there for what felt like an hour, but was more likely just a minute or so.

● ● ●

Apollo arrived later that day. I remember him carrying several suitcases and bags of various sizes packed near to bursting. I understood why he may not have wanted to make multiple trips, but why he insisted on doing all the work himself was beyond me. It's not like he looked particularly athletic, he was actually quite small for someone about one year my senior. "What, did your parents not want to help you move?" I asked as I pulled a duffle bag from his shoulder and a suitcase from out of a death grip.

"Nah," he said between breaths, "It's just me." He then dropped his things to the ground and subsequently crumpled under his own weight, as if his legs were made of paper. Meanwhile, I just stood there, holding some luggage that felt like it was full of stones. I stared down at him, watching his chest rise as fall with each breath, and I became overwhelmed by this sense of pity. Though, I can't say I recognized it as such at the time.

● ● ●

Despite this ordeal, Apollo still had something left out in his car. I offered to retrieve it for him, but he insisted that he be the one to bring it up. I felt like I was in no place to argue, so I watched him step back out the door– not even a full minute after he had collapsed onto the floor of our dorm.

He returned a few minutes later, still short of breath, but carrying just one item. Obvious in identity from its size and shape; it was a guitar case. He set it down by the doorway and pressed his back against the wall. Sweat dripped down from his forehead. I grabbed a bottle of water and tossed it to him, and it collided with his chest before he juggled the container in his arms and chugged about half of it in one sitting.

We both ended up sitting on the floor. Apollo was still drenched in sweat and had gone through another two bottles of water, which were crushed and tossed haphazardly around him. However, he at least seemed cognizant. Eventually, the topic moved to our education and career goals, and he proceeded to explain how his goal was to major in music and pursue some sort of career as a musician.

Just as he explained this to me, my feelings toward Apollo shifted from a strange sort of pity to a clear and unadulterated contempt and loathing. My choice to attend college was to pursue a career in economics, and the work that I saw ahead of me was purely out of a desire for a stable job with a good income. That is what college is for, is it not? Is it not to gain training and knowledge of practical business experience, and the opportunity to find work in that field?

I knew then that there were people that majored in the creative arts, and that there was a place for them in society– I knew that. However, I also understood it to be a foolish venture. How many people pursue a career in the arts? Thousands? Tens of thousands, a year? How many of those that graduate make any semblance of success, whether financial or otherwise? How many even graduate? Perhaps most do, as I cannot imagine the work being nearly as taxing as a degree in math or the sciences. Surely a degree in music could not carry equivalent weight to one in economics, political science, or law.

● ● ●

We hardly spoke for the rest of the day. We retired to our separate rooms, only ever leaving to use the communal restroom. Later in the evening, I was at my desk scrolling through Facebook on my laptop. I saw photos and videos of my friends, finding their own life goals and passions. Blake moved into his dorm, just a couple of floors below me. Lauren and Tanner are now engaged. Chad and Michelle just had their second kid despite both of them struggling to keep the marriage afloat. We all saw it. People have stopped inviting them to events because they cannot coexist in the same room for more than ten minutes before one tries to strangle the other.

I click on the video of Michelle holding her baby. Her smile looks painted on. She is crying, but are they tears of joy over her new child or anxiety over the person holding the smartphone camera? Or perhaps it's the fact that they now have another thread intrinsically linking their lives together, making it harder for either of them to separate.

A pink balloon floats above Michelle's head, yet they call the child their, "beautiful little boy." Perhaps there were no more IT'S A BOY! balloons at Party City, or perhaps someone was expecting a different life for their child.

I click off of the video, and the next post is from Mom. It's two pictures proceeding a novella-sized wall of text. Picture 1. Her and I, shortly after I was born. She still looks youthful, alive, but tired. Very, very tired. I, on the other hand, look like I was molded out of clay, still yet to be cooked; unfinished in her hands.

Picture 2. Me in my senior photo. I really hate this image. I was so very tired and uncomfortable there in the studio, but you could hardly tell that just by looking. They made me wear that stupid bow tie and a tacky black and white suit– but just the top half. They didn't need to photograph anything below the waist; it was just a façade to look professional and well kept.

Though, credit where credit is due, the people doing the touch ups really did a good job of making it look like I was actually happy to be there. It's like looking into a mirror, but one that shows you a warped image of yourself. All the parts of you that make you look good, young, and attractive are accentuated, but you know where the falsehoods lie, and the more you look at it, the more you grow to hate this completely disingenuous version of yourself.

● ● ●

If the tight collar around my neck wasn't bad enough, the church was sweltering. The air conditioning was broken the last time I was there, but it was turning to autumn, so the priest just decided to not fix it. Come the spring and early summer, he still never got around to it. Now I and dozens of middle-aged people are sweating underneath our nice clothing.

The priest pulled out a handkerchief and wiped down the top of his sparkling bald head, then he proceeded to blow his nose into the rag, and he repeated this process several times throughout the sermon. Oftentimes, I couldn't pay attention to what he was actually saying; I just focused on this one repeated action.

● ● ●

The whole congregation stood for communion. The priest and two other elders moved into positions to hand out the wafers and wine.

It was the first time I had ever participated in the practice, and my mind could not rest as I stood in the line. My arms were quaking by my sides and I could find no good place to put them. I thrust them into my pockets, under my armpits, behind my back, everywhere felt wrong and disingenuous.

● ● ●

Apollo was by far the most social of the two of us. He always wanted to arrange time together, even if it was just walking and talking on the way to class. I often tried to find an excuse to avoid this, but some excuses can only last so long before your true intentions become obvious.

He would talk on and on about his classes, what kind of music he was listening to, virtually every aspect of his life. I responded with very little. It didn't seem to upset him; he seemed quite content to talk about himself. A trait that I was not particularly fond of.

Eventually, I began getting up and leaving the dorm before he even woke up. I had built my entire schedule off of trying to avoid him as much as possible. Any time I saw him on campus, I tried to keep my distance. If we ever passed each other, I would simply not acknowledge him and pretend I never saw him.

Despite this, I can't say I hated him– on the contrary, I began to hate myself. I felt as though I was punishing him for his eccentricities, and I never wanted that. The Lord said to "judge not, that ye be not judged" (Matthew 7:1), and I always took that ideology to heart, but my heart was conflicted, as it seems it has always been. Any time I saw his face, this familiar discomfort swelled within my chest, and the thoughts and feelings that I had often dismissed would race back to me.

● ● ●

"Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

I remember the priest reading this passage from his pulpit at the front of the sanctuary. It certainly is a convenient piece of the Scripture. It's like a laundry list of sinful behavior to avoid.

As a child, my mind held on to this one set of verses. Perhaps because the Bible is so often left open to one's interpretation of its text, but there it was, written in plain ink, many concepts that someone needed to avoid to be deserving of eternity in heaven. Not a comprehensive list, of course, nor should it be the only verses to cite for a wholly moral lifestyle, but for me, it was a start.

It seemed that, in the eyes of God, you were either all in, or you were out. So, I spent the next few years becoming deeply engaged with the church and the Scripture. I wanted nothing more than to be the best follower I could be, lest I suffer an eternal damnation. Even the rest of my family considered my practice a bit extreme, but I only wished to do right by the eyes of the Lord, for such abstaining from sin should grant me the eternal love and favor of God.

Why, then, did my heart– the vessel by which my faith resided– swell with excitement at the thought of lying in bed with other men? Why did I long for another masculine body to hold me? For us to embrace each other as the gentle moonlight illuminated that which we could not normally see through the dark.

I had tried to turn these feelings toward one of the opposite sex, but that fell apart very quickly. She was a good person, but I could not love her. She always wanted to move the relationship forward, but I was still waiting for that spark of affection, of joy– of literally anything for me to attach to, so that I could say I loved her, and mean it– but it never came. I felt cornered into a situation I wanted no part in, so we separated, and I pushed the feelings down. I felt that if I must feel such a way, then that is fine, but I must not act on such desires, and I should convert this desire– this lust– into energy directed into my faith. I would have to pursue morality to such a degree so as to compensate for my innate sin. This, I decided, was my passion.

● ● ●

Snow began falling across the campus. Classes were canceled after several inches accumulated over the first couple of hours. I woke up to the alert on my phone, and decided to just stay in bed. It was easier than pretending.

Then, I heard it. The gentle chords of Apollo’s guitar piercing through the thin walls of the dorm. It was not uncommon for him to practice when classes were over, but I rarely ever listened. Other times I would put on headphones and drown it out with my own music, or listen to a podcast while doing homework, but this time I layed in bed and just let the music envelop me.

There was something there that I had never cared to hear before. I wish I could explain it in words how each note caressed me and comforted me, like the warm embrace of a parent or lover.

Then it suddenly stopped. A faint voice passed through the walls, though I do not recall understanding its words. All I do remember is the aching in my chest which returned when the music stopped. I tried to dismiss it, to be rid of the thoughts and feelings that crept back into my mind. "You don't really want this," I told myself, "Just stay true."

It was like a drug, and I was feeling the withdrawal.

"Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him" (James 1:12).

● ● ●

I tossed and turned until I reached over to my desk and grabbed the Bible. Still in bed, I opened the book and tried to read through the pain. My eyes couldn't focus, and I hardly recall reading anything. I was just mindlessly flailing through the pages, all of which looked like seas of off-color white with dots of black ink floating across its surface. Eventually, I landed on a page that had been marked with a sticky note. One that I had practically memorized word for word by this point: 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.

I stared at the paragraph for minutes or hours, I still do not recall, but I was pulled back as I read the next line. Verse 11: "And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God."

● ● ●

When Apollo opened his door, I saw a pair of reddened eyes staring back at me. I don’t remember what I said, but the next thing I knew we were sitting on his bed, talking. It was the most we’d talked in months, yet it felt like we had never stopped. I confessed that which had been on my mind, and apologized for how I had treated him throughout the months we had known each other. He responded with very little, and that was enough for me.

We both stopped to watch the snow pile up out the window in silence. The anxiety still filled my chest and had made its way up to my throat. I felt like I was choking on the words I wanted to say to him, unable to say anything more. I looked back at Apollo, and the puffy red around his eyes was almost entirely overpowered by the bright blue that glittered in their center. Staring back at me, his mouth moved, but I just barely heard the words escape, “Are you sure that this is what you want?”

I couldn't hesitate. “Yes.”

● ● ●

I raised my head to the priest and took a few steps closer to the altar. He brought the wafer up toward me and said, just as he had said to the previous hundred or so people, “The body of Christ.”

With my throat pushing against my collar, I was able to whimper out an, “Amen.” From there, I opened my mouth, extended my tongue, and accepted the body of Christ inside me. As the wafer dissolved, I felt the warmth of the room envelop me. Sweat dripped from my brow and my eyes opened to see the symbol of the crucifixion hanging over the entire congregation.

● ● ●

Looking down, I saw Apollo’s face, bright red and sweating. His bare chest raised and fell rhythmically with each breath he took. His fingernails had dug into my back, to a point in which I was afraid I would start bleeding. My own chest swelled and I felt that same feeling of fear and doubt in my throat, but it all seemed to fade as I saw Apollo look back up at me and smile. He had, in that moment, a smile like I had never seen before– it was a smile of true, unadulterated passion. A smile that I feared I would never be able to replicate.

I collapsed on his chest. He wrapped his arms tighter around me, and I reciprocated. A cold chill seemed to run through the room as the storm still raged outside, yet here we lay, warm in each other’s arms.

As my breathing began to steady, and his chest settled on a gentle rise and fall, there was one sound that persisted. Like the ticking of a clock, I heard the soft and measured beat of a heart.

#short story #short fiction #young adult #writing #creative writing #lgbtq #gay #queer

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tantive404 · 2 years ago

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Let’s talk about Tarkin x Leia! The problematic rarepair which has tightened its grip on my heart 😍😍

Iconic villain x heroine stuff… A pairing which deserves so much more attention.

The way he grabs her face… even watching the scene as a kid, I think it awakened something in me. “Wait… why is Tarkin touching Leia like that?” “Is he into her?”

It’s something so distinctly twisted and intimate between two complete enemies. From there, wasn’t too hard to imagine the Grand Moff having a villainous crush on his prisoner…

Then there’s the little bow he gives her here… He can torture and threaten her but at the same time still knows how to treat her like a princess.

Such a gentleman… 😍

As evidenced by the facetiously complimentary way he talks to her, and the Bow, his treatment of her is almost courtly. Yet it is still with that distinctive Creepy Old Man behavior… He uses his physical proximity to his prisoner to establish dominance.

For instance here, where it LITERALLY LOOKS LIKE HE IS SNIFFING HER HAIR. Wookieepedia even captioned the image as “sexual harassment”. 💀

And here, where he backs her against Vader, leaving the Princess trapped between her two most hated enemies… 👀

Creepy physical chemistry notwithstanding, perhaps most compelling about this pairing is the way they are representatives of two complete opposing ideals— quite literally at war with one another.

Leia Organa is princess of Alderaan, a pacifistic planet. But in spite of that, she is very much willing to take up weapons and fight to overthrow the Empire.

It is during her time as Imperial Senator that she becomes a secret leader in the Rebel Alliance… running covert operations to ferry supplies to the Rebellion and steal information from the Empire, all under the guise of “mercy missions”— and inspiring hope among those who would dare to oppose the tyrannical regime.

Wilhuff Tarkin, meanwhile, is an equally important military leader in the Empire. While Leia fights for the lofty ideals of peace and freedom, it is the Governor’s belief that the most effective way to lead is through fear. This is the founding basis of his Tarkin Doctrine— a policy which is utilized thoroughly within the Imperial military.

A policy which Leia thoroughly opposes, up to the very point of her capture…

Moreover, the establishment of Leia and Tarkin as “opposite representations of good and evil” within the film is something completely intentional— so much so that to highlight this, actor Peter Cushing made the choice to stand in the shadows so that the light shown on Carrie Fisher’s/Leia’s face.

We love a pairing of light/darkness…

Their scene together on the Death Star bridge has always been fascinating to me, as a dramatic confrontation between a powerful man of the evil Empire and his captive Princess— a figurehead of the Rebellion determined to overthrow him. The utter disdain they hold for one another, the seething hatred hidden behind sharply placed words…

“Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader’s leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.”

“Charming, to the last. You don’t know how hard i found it, signing the order to terminate your life.”

Obviously they’ve met before, and now, it is all coming to a head here. Leia is right where Tarkin wants her— as his prisoner. 👀He truly believes he— and by extension, the Empire— has won over Leia, this figurehead of Rebellion. And to assert his dominance, he uses gloating words and taunting physical closeness to intimidate her…

Leia resists him, but it is here with Tarkin that she is at her most vulnerable, presenting a rather interesting power dynamic.

He is a reprehensible villain and her captor; she is his defiant rebel prisoner and the fierce heroine. Not to mention their age difference and the way both he and Vader tower over her…

It’s a delicious push and pull dynamic with tons of tension, a relationship which would be absolutely so toxic and horrible, and it’s genuinely so fun to think about.

All their banter and tension and hate, possible chance meetings prior to A New Hope… Secret rendezvous and interrogations in her Death Star cell… The sheer potential for dark AUs…

In conclusion I hope you will consider Willeia 😌💖

“Perhaps she would respond to an… alternative form of persuasion.” 😏😏

#villain x heroine #ship manifesto #willeia #tarkin x leia #leia organa #wilhuff tarkin #star wars a new hope #tarkin #princess leia #problematic ships #rarepair

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aerial-jace · 3 years ago

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This started as me trying to think of something to write for a KestrelJay fic, but thanks to @mallowstep enabling me it became a full-on Po3 + OotS AU. I present to you: Po3 + OotS but the powers don’t come with a prophecy attached AU. Alternatively: Po3 + OotS but Jayfeather willingly became a medicine cat out of delusions of grandeur.

The only reason I’m deleting the dark forest part of the conflict is so I can use the powers but still have this AU be about an entirely new interpersonal conflict that doesn’t cross over with that whole thing

Jaykit figures out very early on about his dream powers, using it to hop across the dreams of his littermates and others in the nursery. Growing up he hears lots of stories about dreams and prophecies and medicine cats and the rest, so naturally he gets really excited about this special power and gets it into his head that he’s destined to be the next medicine cat.

(He can’t see in dreams on this one. He knows he’s actually dream hopping and not just dreaming of the others in the nursery because he’s very insistent about asking others what they dreamed about. The other kits are impressed but no adult gives him the time of day with it.)

Hollykit, ambitious little furball that she is, also gets it into her head that she’s going to be the next medicine cat. When playing in the nursery, the arguments about it are endless.

Lionkit’s concerned because if both his siblings become medicine cat apprentices, does that mean he’s gonna have to put up with that meanie Berrypaw all on his own? 3:

As they approach apprenticing age, Leafpool notices the two siblings are very much serious about wanting to be her apprentice. It’s at this time that Jaykit starts to brag about his dream hopping ability as if that’s going to guarantee him the position. Hollykit, meanwhile, is trying to help however she can.

Leafpool very much thinks Hollykit would make a better apprentice, she sounds much more helpful to have around and she thinks someone should really check Jaykit’s growing ego.

The day of their apprentice ceremony comes and Jaypaw is fucking pissed, like in canon Lionpaw goes to Ashfur, Hollypaw to Leafpool, and him to Brightheart.

Brightheart and Longtail are really trying to be helpful and encouraging here. Longtail even sort of came out of retirement just so he could assist them outside camp. But Jaypaw’s just being a brat and it makes all three miserable. He won’t listen to instructions, he rushes everything just so he can go pester Leafpool, when out on patrol he will try to sneak away, he is very rude to them, etc.

Lionpaw tries to be a supportive brother, trying to give Jaypaw encouragement and tips, reassuring him that he can grow up to be a great warrior, convincing Ashfur to let them train together, and so much more but he’s just met with the same scorn and aggression that Jaypaw has for Brightheart and Longtail. Doesn’t help matters that Lionpaw is just good at this, reinforcing Jaypaw’s belief that this is not his special destiny.

Hollypaw is trying her best, but like in canon she just struggles a lot with memorizing and identifying herbs and of course being grossed out by actually treating injuries. She also tries to extend an olive branch to Jaypaw, only to be met with scorn and particularly harsh insults. He also tries to butt in whenever he has the chance. Leafpool’s getting really fed up with all this.

This whole thing lasts for like a moon to a moon and a half and the whole of ThunderClan camp just doesn’t have the energy to deal with Jaypaw anymore. The general stress and just in general being so worn out give Jaypaw the perfect in to enter Leafpool’s usually more tightly guarded mind. She originally thinks the little brat has just been so annoying she ended up dreaming of him but when he turns up the next day and recites her whole dream to her, she sighs in defeat.

She’s perfectly aware that she shouldn’t reward him for wearing her down, but this has gone on long enough. She’s seen Hollypaw and she knows it would be better for her to swap mentors now. And if StarClan has given Jaypaw this power, she’s not about to go trying to prevent his destiny. She knows better than to piss them off.

Jaypaw is an immature, smug little shit about this whole thing, and Leafpool knows she has her work cut out for her in regards to nipping that in the bud. At the very least he’s obedient now and very eager to make up for lost time.

Their first night on the apprentice’s den, Hollypaw and Lionpaw begin to bond over complaining about their dickhead brother. It’s extremely cathartic and even though they’re keeping everyone else up they don’t mind either. They needed that release as well.

Hollypaw quickly learns that Lionpaw is very good at this warrior thing, way better than she’d expect with how behind she is. They figure out Lionpaw’s got a power as well, and while Hollypaw’s initially concerned he will turn out a dickhead as well, the experience of Jaypaw keeps Lionpaw humble. At least when not around Berrypaw.

It’s Jaypaw’s first half moon gathering and he can’t help but bounce with excitement. He’s excited to meet everyone and share tongues with StarClan and to be announced officially as Leafpool’s apprentice and all the rest. As they meet the others he finds that the other two apprentices are not being as friendly as he’d expected. Willowpaw is downright angry at him for costing her a friend, while Kestrelpaw is polite but distant. They’ve both been warned of him and seeing them both act so coldly really hurts Jaypaw.

(While all of this is happening, LionBerry is going through a rivals to lovers arc in the background. And of course we all know Hollypaw is massively gay for Willowpaw.)

Jaypaw is really lost on what to do. He wants to make friends with the other medicine cat apprentices, but he’s just not got the social skills for this. He thinks invading their privacy in dreams is a good idea, kind of forgetting everyone and their mother know of his power and that most people find that creepy.

It takes a while, but seeing his desperation to make friends, Kestrelpaw starts to open up and Jaypaw is massively emotional about it. They bond as friends and over time they get Willowpaw to also open up. The three become really close friends and they encourage Jaypaw to fix his relationship with his siblings.

When Hollyleaf and Lionblaze get their full names, Jaypaw starts to reach out to them. They’ve seen Jaypaw becoming more humble and minding his own business over time, so they’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But it still takes time for their relationship to be repaired.

Willowshine and Kestrelflight earn their full names and Jaypaw couldn’t be more proud of his friends. Him and Kestrelflight begin to date (using those handy-dandy dream powers they don’t even have to meet physically!) and he starts to relay messages between Willowshine and Hollyleaf.

It’s around this time that Flamepaw, the token straight of the medicine cat gang, shows up. He’s basically the reverse of that whole “Everyone has a gay cousin and if you don’t it’s you” thing, which becomes really apparent with how his gay cousins dominate the conversation at all the half moon gatherings.

(For the sake of the joke, his siblings are bi. He only learns this after telling them about how gay the half moon meetings are.)

When Jaypaw earns his full name, Leafpool names him Jaystorm because of how much of a handful he was as an apprentice and as a reminder to not fall back on those old behavior patterns.

Jaystorm announcing his full name to his siblings and showing healthy pride in his accomplishment is basically the end of his arc regarding repairing his relationships. They’re now all equals in the eyes of the clan and they get along pretty well. They’re his preferred escorts whenever he has to go out of camp and they’re glad to spend more time with him.

Fast forward to the time of OotS, Jaystorm notices fairly early on the signs that Dovekit also seems to have special powers and begins making plans to ensure she and Ivykit aren’t driven apart by ego and jealousy like he and his littermates were

Dovekit, thankfully, starts showing interest in becoming a medicine cat while Ivykit doesn’t. Come their apprentice ceremony, Jaystorm maneuvers to have himself be named the official mentor of Dovepaw and Hollyleaf the mentor of Ivypaw.

(Leafpool’s still around or something. I deliberately also omitted the fire scene and the parentage reveal drama. But she’s just not a character I’m interested in and sidelining her is for the good of the story.)

Having someone with partial medicine cat training mentoring Ivypaw means Jaystorm can very easily make an excuse to have her as part of his escort when herb gathering. Ivypaw, of course, complains endlessly about it, but she finds it nice to have time to spend with Dovepaw.

Under the guidance of the three, Dovewing and Ivypool grow up to be well adjusted adults who deal with the whole powers thing very maturely. All five of them are very close to each other, to the point the three almost consider those two as honorary little sisters.

(It’s fine, Cinderheart ends up having Fernsong with a completely unrelated tom. Lionblaze is too focused on his husband Berrynose to have eyes for anyone else. It fixes the incest, even.)

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atomicblasphemy · 4 years ago

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So, that before opening credits scene at the grom episode, I’ve been putting a lot of thinking into it. Here’s the thing, we see the portal open and King is watching so videos on Luz’s phone, right? Moreover, there’s a charger there that leads straight to the aforementioned portal. Now, this means that they are pretty much siphoning electricity from somewhere in the human realm. And we know for a fact that the human realm side of the portal is in a ran down shack that’s pretty unlikely to have power, also its in a pretty isolated wooden area. This leads to the unavoidable questions of: a - where the hell is the outlet? b - how long is that damn extension cord (and where can I buy one as long as that)?

For all we know, Luz and Camila’s home is the closest building to that ran down shack, i.e. the most likely answer to question a. This raises a few interesting scenarios, because it means that someone from the owl house would need to go through the portal, probably carrying an obscene amount of electric cables, go into Camila’s home, plug it, and make sure that Camila won’t unplug it.

First candidate for the job would be King, obviously. Problem is, he probably wouldn’t stand for such a lowly job. Besides he is likely too tiny to carry all that amount of power cables.

Second candidate: Luz herself. This should be even more difficult.

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“Mija? What are you doing?”

“Oh... Hi, Mami... Nothing, just uhhh charging my phone.”

“Why here, though? Don’t they have power at camp? Is that why you’re not returning my messages?”

“They... uhhh...” *sprints back to the portal*

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And, of course the third candidate would be Eda.

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“Miss Noceda, I understand you are in a lot of distress right now. But I need you to try again and tell us what happened in a calm manner. You said there was a break in, right? Where did the intruder go and when did this creature appear?”

After taking a few long breaths, looking at the officer’s eyes she continued. A few meters behind a large feathery figure lay asleep, it’s body coated with the colors of many tranquilizing darts.

“I... I was trying to get some sleep. I have long shifts and little chance to rest so this normally comes pretty easily. But as soon as my head hits the pillow I start hearing noises from downstairs, like someone going through my stuff. So I grab the first heavy object I find and start making my way there. So... In the middle of the living room is this tall white lady, striking ambar eyes, long grey hair going all the way down to her hips... and that tight fitting burgundy dress, like something that she had worn multiple times, but she still looked surprisingly elegant in it...” “Ma’am, please stay on track. You mentioned she said her name was ‘Edalyn Clawthorne’, most powerful witch in the Boiling Isles. Is that correct?”

“Right, sorry about that. But yeah, that’s correct.”

“We have checked, many times actually, for an Edalyn Clawthorne and nothing came up. Needless to say the same goes for those ‘Boiling Isles’. Did the intruder present any other form of behavior that you, especially considering your line of work, would understand as indicative of drug use or anything along those lines?”

“Humm... Well... Right after she introduced herself she said she was there to steal my power, some of my stuff... then she took a long look at me and said ‘and with some luck, your heart’. Then she winked at me and... I believe the kids call it fingerguns... She did that. That’s pretty much all that happened before I remember this person was invading my house and then I started yelling and trying to hit her with my bedside lamp. That’s when... Look, you won’t believe me anyway...”

“Why don’t you try me anyway?”

After taking a deep sigh, Camila continued.

“Right... At first she seemed like she was trying to calm me down or something. Then all of a sudden her eyes started going all black...”

“Mhmm”

“She let out this blood curling screech. It sounded almost as if she was in pain.”

“Mhmm”

“Then the feathers started appearing, her body started growing... I really thought she was going to kill me.”

“I see... That being the case how do you explain the first officers in the scene reporting they found the creature cuddling up to you in the front porch and the two of you watching Up! on your phone?”

“Well... First of all, shiny things seem to calm her down. Second, I didn’t know birds could purr.”

Meanwhile, the house’s backdoor is open, a long white cord snake in. It’s end laying a few inches from an unused outlet.

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Suffice to say Eda would be a no go either.

This leaves Owlbert. He is used to the human realm, but there’s again the problem of size. Nevertheless, the biggest problem is he obvious cuteness, which means that if Camilla is anything like her daughter, means the lady will try adopting and we might get some kind of weird reverse version of the show staring Camilla and Owlbert.

This leaves one final option. And I think it is important at this point to remind ourselves that it is of the utmost importance that the power cord remains connected to an outlet in the Noceda household at all times.

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Camila had just laid her head on the pillow. The softness of the fabric was a great contrast to the sounds emerging from downstairs. There was no question: her house was being burglarized. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence around those parts, she wanted to afford Luz the most safety and comfort possible but there was only so much her limited income could do. She was terrified, but also curious. After all, it stands to reason that criminals more often than not use discretion as their best weapon, the way the make sure to be long gone before the victim ever realizes that there even was a crime.

Whoever was downstairs, they had not intention of making their presence a secret. They had broken through the window and the shattering glass was loud enough in the mostly empty house, but that didn’t seem to be enough for whoever was down there. It sounded as though a tornado was taking place entirely on her living room and kitchen.

Curiosity defeats fear. She opens her chamber door, tentative steps heading towards the stairways. She was never a reckless person, she knew the costs and consequences actions can have. But something deep in her being, churning up her guts, screamin that what was taking place in her home did not belong in this world. That whatever it was she would never have another chance of witnessing and no amount of adult responsibility can defeat the childish urge for wonder. She thought of the daughter she so missed. And such novelties are hardly ever divorced from the fear of the unknown.

The final step and she was at last on ground level. Sure enough, she could see plenty signs of the devastation. Furniture upturned, shelves spilling their contents on the floor, dirt and mud splattered in all surfaces. But, nothing missed. Not much broken either. Whoever was there, their intentions evaded her entirely.

The kitchen. A loud metallic bang came from the kitchen.

When had she start shaking?

She regrets her former bravery, but she was a Noceda, she crossed the sea in search of a better life. She faced monsters before. She was no coward.

Camila Noceda was no coward. She looked into the kitchen.

There was the intruder, whatever it was. She lacked names for the being, no, the monster making a ruckus in her kitchen. In it’s beak a plug it tried to jam into one of the outlets on the wall and surprisingly enough it was the one closest to the window it had entered through. And she knew that that had been the entry point better than she knew her own name at this point. It the shattered glass on the flower was not incontrovertible evidence enough the damning proof was that the being had not yet finished crossing that threshold. Perhaps it never would. Its body, this elongated yellow mass of yellow feathers was still on the window, going back into the woods to an unfathomable distances.

This monster, she knew did not belong in this world. Reality was unkind, and working with the healing of bodies she knew nature could be cruel. But this. This was madness. And finally when the creature seems to notice her presence the void in it’s eyes seemed to voice agreement with such belief.

It’s birdlike face inched ever closer to Camila’s. She couldn’t move. The power cord still in the creatures beaks. Camila would have once considered owls as the most precious and adorable birds. No longer.

It offered the power cord to the human. She plugged it. Mortals could not challenge the designs of immortals, after all.

The creature seemed satisfied. It’s face grew even closer to Camila’s, and finally a sound in a surprisingly screechy voice echoed through the ravaged home and it’s denizens soul:

“H O O T”

And before perception could catch up, it was gone.

She would live in the house for the remainder of the many decades of her life. Things would change, new pieces of furniture, new colors, adaptations to accommodate an aging body.

Much would change in the Noceda home over the years. But that plugged power cord would be a constant. A heirloom she would pass on for generations. An offering to make sure whatever demon, or god she made acquaintances with that night would remain satisfied, not to return to this world, not to ravage it one home at a time again.

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So yeah, I’m pretty sure Hooty was the one that made sure the owl house has a reliable source of electricity.

#THE OWL HOUSE #luz noceda #KING #owlbert #owl beast #camila noceda #edalyn clawthorne #eda #hooty #the owl house hooty

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hectabdr · 4 years ago

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Dragon Raja IV - Chapters 9 & 10 (Abridged)

Hi everyone, in today's update we start learning a little more about Johann's father and that vision that Luminous experienced.

Previous Chapters

Chapter 9

Luminous woke up in a white room. In front of him there was an old man in a white doctor's coat. He explained that once Luminous left the library, he fell and hit his head on the pavement, so his friends brought him to a hospital to check if he had a concussion. Behind the mirror, however, they were being watched by two psychiatrists, next to them, Nono and Finger observed as well. Luminous had to answer many questions, he answered as logically as he could. According to the lead doctor, this wasn't a good sign, a person who knows that they're suffering from some sort of mental disease will always make an extra effort to demonstrate their sanity and Luminous was definitely going the extra mile.

They actually brought him there after Finger threw a rock at his friend's head and knocked him out. Truth be told, they already suspected the doctor's diagnostic, their friend was schizophrenic. Luminous's tantrum didn't help his case either. The young S-Rank was yelling, then threatened the personnel to let him go and almost flipped the table. Minutes later, he was already constricted by a straitjacket, resting on a small hospital bed.

Trying to ignore the other patients with whom he shared a room, he slowly vanished under the effects of a sedative injection. As soon as his eyes closed, his body felt the cold sensation of heavy rain. He was in the number 0 highway all over again, trapped in that same vision, the one where Nono would die in minutes, yet the shadowy creatures were not trying to eat them alive, but frozen like statues, while a small figure walked among them. Carrying an oversized umbrella, the little devil greeted his brother and made an interesting contribution.

The dream that Luminous experienced was not simply a prediction, but a simulation of it, and as such, it could be experienced all over again. In fact, he could repeat the same scenario as many times as he needed to find the one where Nono would survive. It was like the "save" feature in a video game and there was no need to exchange a quarter of his life for this service.

-Odin, what is he?

-You could understand him as a dead soul, trapped in this Nibelungen. He possesses infinite power, yet for some reason, he couldn't leave this place for many years, until now.

Odin's restriction was about to end, after all, he managed to lock Nono with the Gungir lance and it was a matter of time before he could leave the Nibelungen to reach her. Once you're locked by the lance, you're doomed to die, however, it cannot be locked on the same target twice, since theoretically said target should be dead already. Therefore, the solution was simple, if Luminous managed to prevent the lance from hitting Nono, Odin wouldn't be able to try for a second time. According to Ming·Z, someone in the past already escaped the Gungir lance, he just didn't know how. Luminous would have multiple chances to find a way, with a clear objective in mind, he started the second round.

The scenario resumed and the creatures started moving towards them. The pair once again fought for their lives, with a big difference: Luminous performed exceptionally well. Being able to remember the behavior of the servitors allowed him to know exactly how and where to shoot them, leaving Nono speechless. She was particularly surprised when he blew up her car, since he forgot the part where they agreed to escape in the Maybach. Wasting time to explain his course of action, a servitor took advantage of their distraction and cut through Nono's neck with its hands, killing her in an instant.

He woke up in his hospital bed, extremely frustrated. Ming·Z·Lu left a phone in his bed with a message that invited him to try again. The only problem was that he couldn't fall asleep. Luminous threw tantrum after tantrum until the nurse came in and he requested another sedative injection, which surprised her. According to the doctors, these sedatives weren't addictive, so Luminous had little to no reason to want another one. He had to lie about his condition, saying that there were voices in his head yelling to one another. The nurse injected him again and he fell asleep, ready for his third attempt.

In the middle of the battle, he noticed that one of the servitors had a little number next to it, just like the stats in an RPG, and the creature was a "level 600 enemy". According to Ming·Z, a very strong regular human should have a combat level of 100, so this thing had six times the strength of a tai chi master. Enemies that strong should be avoided in close combat and shot from a distance instead. Odin's power level and other stats were displayed as a bunch of question marks. It was a sign of their abysmal difference in strength. When Luminous tried to analyze Ming·Z·Lu, his stats were hidden by question marks as well.

Chapter 10

Days later, Finger and Nono were drinking in Luminous's old bedroom, trying to figure out what to do next. They believed they understood the situation, their friend was mentally ill. He knew about this boy called Lu Mang, who died in an accident and he created an imaginary version of him. He projected most of his own accomplishments into this made up president of the Lionheart club and got two of his former classmates involved in his delusional quest.

Finger suggested giving Luminous back to the college, despite of the risk that it might represent to his safety. If they apologized for their actions and brought back the number one target of the secret party, they might have been able to get pardoned. Maybe Caesar could ensure his well being. Nono still insisted in analyzing the inconsistencies on everyone else's perspective on Luminous and Finger suggested that she just couldn't accept the truth of her sidekick's mental condition.

Finger's suggestion was tearing her apart on the inside, because she knew that she was supposed to be the one who suggested they give up on Luminous, then Finger would be offended and start defending his old roommate, this didn't make much sense, why was she the one who was hesitating? She expressed her disgust at his proposal and left Luminous's old house.

-Even if he's the disoriented puppy that you say he is, it's still mine! I'm the one who picked him up from the women's bathroom!

Meanwhile, Luminous just lost his 46th attempt at saving his former senior. After all of those attempts, he suffered 22 serious injuries, including 12 fractures, 7 deep wounds and 1 broken finger. His previous attempt was devastating, he managed to get in the car with Nono, but the death servitors lifted the car up in the air and they couldn't accelerate anymore. Nono was visibly terrified, while the creatures destroyed the vehicle, they sat down, waiting for their end to come.

Ming·Z tried to dissuade Luminous from pursuing Nono, or even saving her, but his brother refused. The little devil was confused about his brother's feelings and revealed that he had been writing a small webnovel inspired by the real life relationship between Luminous and Nono. His readers weren't particularly happy with her character and wanted her to be more clear about her intentions.

-I learned more about humans to understand the feelings that you have for your senior sister.

-Did you find your answer?

-Yes, your feelings are in all the wrong places.

-Nonsense!

Perhaps there was something he could do. Ming·Z couldn't stop the Gungir lance, but he would be able to kill Odin if Luminous was willing to trade his last quarter of life. As expected, Luminous refused, so he gave him another gift: he would provide him with any weapon he could ask for on his next attempts. Luminous asked for an apache helicopter but Ming·Z forced him to settle for something smaller, a bazooka.

The next round started and Nono freaked out when she saw Luminous's new rocket launcher, where did he get it from?

Back in the real world, Nono arrived at an abandoned building that belonged to the Media Asia Group. The boss of the Black Prince Group was an old acquaintance of hers, a devoted one at that, the same young man who lend her the red Ferrari: the young master Shao. His business card was enough to allow Nono to request information about an old employee: a man whose last name was Chu.

The middle aged man that guarded the old building was curious about this girl and her credentials. She went straight to the point and asked for the long deceased man, Mr. Chu. The guard recognized the surname immediately, his full name was Chu Tianjiao. Long ago they used to be colleagues and drank together from time to time.

Tianjiao was married to a dancer and had a young son, he wanted to earn more money, so he quit his job working as a driver for members of the taxation bureau and became the personal driver of a wealthy man, who owned the Maybach that Tianjiao drove every day.

Nono kept asking for more information, but there wasn't much to say, he loved spicy chicken wings and braised pork belly, he barely spoke unless it was to brag about simple things. But there was something more, Tianjiao lived in the factory, so she asked the man to take her to Tianjiao's room. In her way, she noticed a reflection in the window, powerful flames, but it only lasted a second.

Tianjiao's bedroom hadn't been opened for many years, but the air inside was surprisingly clean, just a little dusty. The furniture was simple, a double bed, a bedside table, a writing desk, a chair and a mini-refrigerator. Some strings in the corner of the room were used to dry his clothes and a jacket was hanged in them. This was everything that Chu Tianjiao had. Nono stepped in, asking to be left alone and she closed the door to allow her profiling ability to fill the missing details. She analyzed every aspect of the small place and came across a photograph. A family of three, a boy who was five at most, a woman with a bright smile and a man in a white shirt and woolen pants combing his hair, hugging his wife proudly. Was the boy Johann Chu? She couldn't recognize his face.

Nono sat down on the bed, closed her eyes and allowed her ability to put her in that man's shoes. She saw him, a man with no name arriving at the town for the first time, carrying nothing but a suitcase. He sat down at a food stand and ordered braised pork belly, but the vision was interrupted by the pain of heavy mental exhaustion.

Her skills were demanding and she found herself trapped in that state, feeling like the was sinking in deep water as she desperately tried to escape. The experience sent her back to the Three Gorges Dam, where she almost died, a monster came to her aid and yelled "Don't die! don't die! don't die!"

She wasn't completely sure about how she survived on that mission. Caesar and Luminous put a story together, in which Norton approached the diving bell and attacked her, the dragon then attacked the Monach, where Caesar skillfully slayed the monster. Luminous brought her back to the boat, where she woke up in her boyfriend's arms.

But there was more to it, a monster, one that ordered her not to die and saved her with powers that broke the rules of the world she knew. Was that an illusion?

Nono felt the whole place trembling and got out of the room, outside, the rainfall had flooded the building and the whole structure was sinking in the muddy ground in which it was built. Nono tried to make her way out, she was trained for this, swimming as fast as she could, she got trapped by the tons of stored garbage and slowly passed out from suffocation until someone finally grabbed her wrist.

She woke up in an ambulance, where she discovered the identity of her savior: the boring middle-aged man that guided her to Tianjiao's room was in fact an olympic swimmer who almost joined the national team! He even had an 8-pack and all, Nono wondered, when did that old man become so interesting?

Anyway, while everyone clapped and celebrated the local hero, she contemplated the ruins of the sinking building. Her last connection to Chu Tianjiao was now lost.

In a simulated combat situation, inside of his dreams, Luminous was now on his 62nd attempt to save Nono. His routine was well practiced, not a single bullet was wasted. He pushed Nono back into the Maybach and prepared to fire the Bazooka at the death servitors, but the projectile exploded inside of the cannon, killing them both in the resulting explosion. Ming·Z excused himself for the defective product, after all, Luminous already used dozens of them so at least one could be expected to have some sort of flaw.

77th load, by this point he already managed to make it out oof the servitor battle and they drive deep into the highway. He tried to pass through the toll booths but accidentally hit a concrete isolation block.

He woke up again at the hospital and asked the nurse for another sedative. He had been sleeping for five or six consecutive days with the help of those injections, only waking up to eat and occasionally chat with his fellow patients. The nurse was growing suspicious of him but he faked a mental episode and the nurse ran away to ask for the doctor's instructions.

Finger showed up to visit him and brought some apples, he also reassured him about Nono's trust in him, informing Luminous of Chen's quest to find more clues about Johann's dad. They also found more about Chu's mother, who probably developed her psychological pregnancy after the death of her real son.

To lighten up the mood after the arrival of the nurses, Finger turned the TV on and they watched the news together. Apparently the airport was closed due to the incessant rains, and they were showing the departure of the last plane right before the lockdown, but something startled Luminous.

Odin's flames were reflecting in the water, the god swung his lance and the wind and water were quickly turned into a blade that cut through the airplane like butter. The airport was covered in flames and some of the passengers were injured.

Luminous tried to warn everyone in the hospital and begged them to call the police, but his apparent prediction meant nothing to them, after all, the footage shown in the news was a repetition from days before. They pushed him back into his bed and sedated him immediately.

Odin was indeed too much for regular humans, and he was about to start tormenting the city, just waiting to get out.

#Dragon Raja #Dragon Raja Novel #Luminous #Nono #Ming Z Lu #Johann Chu

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xeo-kunsatan · 4 years ago

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Beast Choices Chapter 1. Diagnosis

Long time ago in Pacopolis... A Russian/Korean Woman have opened her consultory for the first time, ready to receive her first patient.

Muriel Plizetxki.

Age: 21 years

Gender: Female

Birthday: April 4th

Sign: Aries ♈

Race: Purple Sphere-Russian/Korean

Blood type: B+

From her office's door, her First patient have arrived.. It was a insecure and tired white orb next to his mother wich was speaking with Muriel about her son's bad behavior, wishing Muriel would make him change into a perfect boy, to then left him in the office.

Betrayus Spheros

Age: 18 Years

Gender: Male

Birthday: October 28th

Sign: Scorpio ♏

Race: White Sphere-American

Blood type: A-.

–Remember Miss in 2 months of therapy i will give you his Diagnosis–

Muriel said trying to be professional.

–I hope you can handle him, he is sooo complicated... Well see ya Tray Tray, be good– Said the old woman before leaving the office.

–Wow.. what a nice woman..– Muriel said sarcastically.. –Y-Yeah... I guess..– he said with a notable uncomfortably.

The ambient was quiet for a moment, but Muriel started speaking.

–Welcome to this office Mr Spheros, or how can I refer myself to you?– –B-Betrayus.. just Betrayus

--Said bashful the white guy..

--Alright Betrayus, so.. Tell me... What are your problems?

Betrayus was quiet and nervous but he took a break and started narrating..

–Well.. Doctor.. My problems started literally since I born,.. my Dad died when i born... So my mother andmy brother.. they saw me as the guilty of his death and a black sheep...i Dunno if my older sister thinks the same of me....

He was narrating while Muriel was taking notes of his testimony.–

–I didn't knew how my father was, when i tried to ask my mom about him...she just avoid that topic and told me a "shut up" instead, My sister isn't in home for almost all the day because of her work, when i saw her, we just have a short conversations about future stuff and what places we want to visit so i forgot to ask that to her.. and my brother.. he just avoids me with Mom's same behavior.. i think i partly know why he is Mom's favorite..

–Because he is the same shit as her?–

Muriel commented in a jocking way.

–Heheh.. Exactly– He Chuckled

–Is that all, or there's is more you want to share?.. Like.. your childhood?– she said interested while she was still taking notes.

–Well.. about my childhood..it was hard too, i went to the same school as my brother, he was the brilliant Student of the class, he was the best in Chess, math, history, lenguage, football, swimming, golf and hockey. How I'm not like him, for a weird reason classmates sees me as a

Mr no One or a freak, some of them used to bully me....– He added

–Uhuh..– Muriel Answered while she was writting in a new paper

Betrayus seemed a little mad at Muriel's dry attitude, like thinking she wasn't giving a care about his feelings.

– Agh... you know, whatever, that's not important.. you're were just paid to control me

Betrayus's mad expression changed in a melancholic one, something Muriel noticed quickly, then she said him with a warm voice tone and a clumsy smile.

–Don't worry, i will not judge you, even when my work is hear your problems and understand you to then give you dry advices, i really want to help you, i know so well how do you feel, I'm sorry if I sounded like i didn't care, Heh.. This is my first work day and you my first patient, hehe–

Betrayus was embarrassed but relieved at the same time –R-Really?, Oh dang I'm really sorry, i didn't know..–

–No no no, it's okay, it was my fault– Muriel was still with a dummy smile, something that Betrayus saw with tenderness

–Heh at least that confirms me that you're really interested in help me–

She chuckled –Yeah i guess, hehehe

And we'll continuing this, tell me what are the things wich makes you shine?–

–Things wich makes me shine?– he asked confused

–You know, your skills, in what things you are good for– she answered chuckling

–Ooh!, I get it, heh.. well I'm good in lenguage, History, Gambling, Pac pong...well.. uhm.. I don't like it anymore... Also literature and writing, I'm kinda freaky with that..–

Suddenly Betrayus noticed a familiar book from the mini library behind Muriel's.

–Is that?.. No way! Is that the Divine Comedy book!?– He said on a impressed and kinda freaky tone.

–Y-yeah wow I thought I was the only weirdo by reading that book– she was impressed as well.

–Same old, Girl!

Both started sharing their tastes having the surprise that their tastes were the same as each other while they were yelling as bakudeku fangirls.

The hours have passed and Rotunda went to take Betrayus to home.

–Im back, Im sorry if he caused you problems– Rotunda said trying to be nice.

–Ohh Miss he wasn't giving me problems, he behaved really good– She answered keeping herself as professional

Rotunda just paid the date to Muriel and left with Betrayus.

Muriel just sighs of satisfaction at watching his first patient smiling before Left.

"He has a really precious smile".

Muriel have attended another 3 patients more until the day ended, she just left the building of her office to then left to a Cabaret club where she worked to pay her career and getting psychiatrist title, work wich still he is having for actually any Monday night. Sometimes to strip or filming adult movies, Always wearing a wolf mask to hide her identity as well keeping her work as psychiatrist. It's almost hard to say if she hated her job in that Cabaret.

She ended and Left safety to her department to just feed her wolfdog Yūu, take a bath and fall sleep cuddling with Yūu waiting for the next day.

In the timelapse of the days Muriel and Betrayus continued their meetings, sometimes with Muriel taking Yūu to the meetings to give a fluffy support to Betrayus, Muriel became into a big emotional support to Betrayus as well her best friend. Something big was growing up between them.

The 2 months have passed so Muriel will give Rotunda the Diagnosis of Betrayus.

Betrayus: hehe then i told her.. Don't move, and she moved and fell from the stairs.

Muriel: Unholy Satan hahahaha... Heheh.. Hey, did anyone told you that you have a beautiful smile?

Betrayus: R-really?.. thank you..*Blushes* no one told me that before...

Muriel: they lost it. *Smiles too*

Betrayus: you know.. you have a beautiful smile too Muriel.

She blushes as well.

Muriel: i want to see you smile Betrayus..

Betrayus: me too

The door was knocked, It was Rotunda and Stratos to take Betrayus to home as well to know the final diagnosis of Betrayus.

Muriel:*opens the door* come in.

Rotunda: thanks to take me Stratos sweetie.

Stratos: always for you Mom.

Rotunda: Tray Tray, wait outside, we have something important to tell with the doctor.

Betrayus: I'm not a child mom...

Betrayus goes outside and sits in the waiting room, near to the door to hear the conversation, suddenly Yūu appears in front him and gives him warm company.

Meanwhile Rotunda and Stratos were waiting for Betrayus's Diagnosis.

Rotunda: Tell me Doctor, what's the problem with my son, did he behaved bad?

Muriel: Oh no, he is a really nice guy but there's the problem.. he has light Depression attacks but it's not too serious in his case, he doesn't need medicine or something... But the only thing he needs is real attention and affection, something wich you clearly don't give him.

Rotunda: Aghh that's fake!

Stratos: but that's not right, it's just a bratty of him.

Muriel: and... Have you asked it what's the origin of his "Bratty"?.

Stratos: well uhh...

Rotunda: uhmm... Because yes?..

Muriel: *she is mad but keeping herself professional* that doesn't have a sense, no one can have a problem or issue because yes, there always a why, the reason of your son's "Bratty" it's because of the rejection and contempt you give him because of something is not his fault, like the death of your husband, being born after the death of your husband doesn't make him a curse, he is a gift your husband left you before his death, but you prefer to see him in that way, as your husband would liked you to do that to his son.

Rotunda was completely mad so she answered that by slapping Muriel, Stratos was shocked as well Betrayus wich was hugging Yūu stoping her to attack Rotunda.

Stratos: M-Mom..

Rotunda: don't talk about my husband!! you can't tell me how to rise my children, you're not a mother to know that!!.

Muriel:... Maybe I'm not a mother, if i were one i will not treat my children as a bullshit, i would treat them with love.. as my mother used to do

Rotunda: Arrgghh... This is a Nonesense... Stratos take me home..

Stratos: y-yes Mom..

Rotunda have left the office just to meet up with a angry Yūu, Muriel noticed that and ran off the office to calm down Yūu.

Muriel: Yūu-Min No! Calm down Girl, calm down...

Yūu calms down and looks at Betrayus worried.

Stratos;*sneezes* Wolf!!...

Rotunda: Ahh! Beast!!

Muriel;*lies* its actually, an Malamute Alaskan.

Betrayus: i heard everything... Mom.. it's not my fault my dad died, and you know what? I'm tired of you and your bullshit about me!!

Stratos: Betrayus don't speak in that tone to our mother!!!.

Betrayus: *mocks* don't speak in that tone to our mother.. you are just defending her because "you are his favorite child"...

Rotunda: that's it! Betrayus you better take your stuff and leave the house!

Betrayus: in that it's the only thing I can agree with you, mother.

Rotunda: hah, i doubt you can live without me.

Muriel: well, he can live in my department, i have a extra room there.

Betrayus: R-really Muriel? Can I?.

Muriel: Sure.

Rotunda: Fine! Go with your Slut, if she can bear with you.

Muriel: at least bear with me "a slut" it's better to bear with a witch like you.

Stratos: that's enough! Mom... Let's go..

Stratos have left with Rotunda.

Muriel: uff finally...

Betrayus:*hugs her tightly* .. thank you.. Thank you so much Muriel.

Muriel: *hugs back* your welcome...

After that Betrayus started living with Muriel in her apartment as her Roommate, Betrayus find a work as pizza Delivery guy.

Where their story started and their relationship evolved into real love.

To be continued...

Extra:

Muriel and Betrayus have left a bakery with a box of chocolate donuts.

Bully1: hey Babe, what if you leave this white loser and come with a real man~?.

Betrayus; Aghh.. not him..

Muriel: Tray Tray.. hold my donuts *give him the box of donuts*

Betrayus: Muriel?...

Muriel starts beating up the guy to make him Run.

Betrayus:... She is a real lady~♥

#pacman and the ghostly adventures #pmatga

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thehouseofvs · 4 years ago

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Echoes Of Another Life - A Hellish Introduction

Flicker. The sound of many footsteps resonated through a dense forest, filled with towering trees of golden bark that seemed to almost sparkle when the sunlight caught them in a particular manner, their fiery leaves of red, orange, and brown waving and occasionally cascading downward to the mossy floor below. The wind was gentle today, rustling the canopies overhead just enough to ensure that these woods were never silent. Not that they needed to, as the delighted cries of adventurous children bounced back and forth through the forest. About a half-dozen children from the nearby village scurried and ran after one another, all seemingly eager to reach whatever destination it was that they were heading towards. Humans all, they had not a care in the world, for in this distant corner of the realm, they knew only peace. Only the daily life of a peasantry undisturbed. Here, in the Autumn Vale, named so for its eternally-colorful foliage, there was no sign of the greater turmoil that afflicted the rest of the world. And it was during another such blissful day that a raven-haired girl found herself lagging behind the rest of her friends, her sandal-covered feet lightly pattering away at the mossy earth beneath her as she tried to catch up to the others. They were headed towards a small stream that made its way towards their village, brought to them by the mountain springs over yonder. Even if she couldn’t reach them, she knew where they were going - the same place they always did, a wide, flower-strewn clearing within the forest that gave them ample room to run and play. Just as she reaches the stream, the blue-eyed child catches sight of the backs of her fellow village children, who had already crossed over via the stone walkways they had laid out in months past. “Heeeey…! Scipio! Marus! Guys, wait for me!” The girl called out, but her cries went unheeded as her friends continued deeper into the woods. Pouting, she begins to grumble to herself, too preoccupied to take notice of one sizable stone blocking her path. As soon as her toes struck the stone, the girl let out a yelp and tumbled down to the gravelly earth right next to the stream, landing onto her hands and knees. Wincing, and with the occasional whimper escaping her, she could feel that her knees had been cut up a bit from the fall. But before she could stand up to inspect her lightly-wounded limbs, her eyes caught sight of something else - something...unusual. Further upstream, the corpse of a local buck lay near the edge of the water. Seeing dead beasts was not exactly uncommon, even for a young child such as herself, but something about the creature seemed odd to her. For one thing, while it looked as if it had been mauled by another beast - likely a roaming predator - the wounds on it appeared to not be fresh. But, surely, the kill had to be fresh, as a faint amount of dark, sickly blood dribbled from its open wounds and into the stream. Before the raven-haired girl could dwell on the curious sight too much, she once again heard the shrill cries and laughter of her friends further on in the woods. With a grunt, she climbs back up onto her feet, gingerly wiping away the pebbles from her knees and hands before she too crosses the stream via the makeshift stone “bridge” they had made. Following the distant voices, the child raced towards their usual playground, though she would occasionally glance upward to see that some dark-looking clouds had begun to roll in, and rather rapidly at that. Strange, the village’s skywatcher had not predicted any poor weather today - she made sure to ask before leaving the village, as she always did! And the closer she drew towards the forest clearing, the darker the sky became. When she finally arrives, the sky appears as if it were about to pour down a deluge upon the unsuspecting children, the other five all running around and attempting to tag one another in whatever game it was they had chosen to start. Panting from her dash to reach them, the raven-haired girl stops just at the edge of the clearing, leaning against a nearby golden-barked tree and calling out to her friends. “...G-Guys! It’s about to rain! Come over…here?” Her voice trailed off as she looked to the sky overhead of them. The dark clouds that had so rapidly formed had grown denser, and bright, orange-red lights flickered within their depths. That wasn’t lightning, and the girl heard no thunder. What was happening? And as if to answer her confusion, the first of many fiery streams descend from the heavens, illuminating the sky in their radiance before slowly fading away well before they struck the earth. Dozens - no, hundreds of the falling lights fell from the rumbling sky, a cacophony of lights. Feeling a mixture of fear and awe, the girl could not help but stare at the display within the sky for a couple of moments before she looked at her still-playing friends, who all seemed oddly oblivious to what was happening. Concerned for her fellow villagers, she rushes forward and reaches out to grab one passing girl, lightly tugging on her sleeve as she points to the sky overhead. “Look! It’s a starshower! We need to go home!” She tried to inform her friend, her fear evident in her voice. However, the other girl - a plump, brown-haired and mousy child - gives her raven-haired friend a confused stare before also looking at the sky. “...What are you talking about? There’s nothing there!” It was the blue-eyed girl’s turn to be confused, as she once more shot her gaze up towards the sky and...nothing. No more falling stars, no more dark clouds, just an endless expense of blue sky with the occasional, white puff to dot the horizon. “I...wh-what?” The dark-haired girl stammers, slowly releasing her friend’s sleeve as she stares dumbfoundedly at the sky. With a sigh, the plump girl took her younger friend by the hand before calling out to the others. “Hey, I’ll be back! I’m taking her home!” A brief chorus of responses come their way, before the older girl begins to gently tug her dark-haired friend behind her, back towards the way they came. “C’mon, are you not feeling well? Your mother will kill us if you get sick again, you know…” The mousy child chides, as the other girl allows herself to be pulled along, her thoughts seemingly elsewhere. After a few attempts to get the younger girl to talk, the brown-haired girl finally gives up, leaving her friend to her thoughts as she leads the way back to their village. Meanwhile, all the raven-haired child could think about was the falling stars. Was it all just her imagination playing tricks on her? Why did it seem so vivid, so real to her? And did her friends really not see it, either? The sight had instilled in her such a sense of dread, something she had never felt before...what could it possibly mean? “...O-Octavia, I’m so-” _________________________________________________________ Flicker. A week had passed since that fateful day. One long, horrific week. Just the day after the raven-haired girl had witnessed the star shower, the first person in her village had gotten sick. An elderly man known for sharing countless stories and myths, Septimius, had fallen ill with a mysterious ailment. He had grown haggard rapidly, eyes and flesh losing their color, and virulent purple buboes forming on his body. Not long after, he began to secrete blood and viscous ooze from his mouth and ears. Before the sun had set, Septimius was dead, taken as swiftly as the disease had appeared. But that was just the first day. On the second day, like wildfire, the sickness began to spread through the village. The same symptoms began to show on the eldest first, plunging their ancient flesh into horrific agony and draining them of their life. The raven-haired girl’s mother, the local healer, did her best to try and ease the pain of the afflicted...but there was nothing she could truly do to stop their demise. Almost immediately after the second patient perished, the healer sent forth a letter via carrier pigeon - praying that it would reach her contact in time. With the arrival of the third day, the village’s adults came next. Mothers and fathers, working-aged men and women who were responsible for maintaining the village’s day-to-day functions, now rapidly fell ill themselves. Much like their elders, the adults seemed to show the same symptoms...however, they also seemed to become more aggressive, with a tendency to lash out at those near them as they came closer to death. By the time the moon reached its zenith, all that remained were the village’s mourning children, the raven-haired girl, and her mother...but not for long. The raven-haired girl knelt by her mother’s bedside, as the dutiful healer struggled with every breath she made. At this point, the woman knew what had struck her village. The violent behavior of the adults nearing their demise was the final clue...and now, all she could do was fear for the life of her own daughter. Turning her own once-blue, now whitening, gaze on the tear-stained face of her daughter, the healer lifted up a dagger from the bed, and held it handle-out towards her child. At the look of horror on her child’s face, the healer did her best to offer as soothing of a smile as she could...but given her current state, she doubted that it would do much. “...Songbird...I n-need you to do this. Please…” The dying healer rasped out, her exhausted eyes wavering in their vision already. The raven-haired girl violently shook her head, in denial of what was happening. “No…! No, Mama, I can’t...I c-can’t! You can’t...please don’t leave me alone…!” The blue-eyed girl sobs, begging her mother. But even the child knew that such pleas were futile. She had seen with her own eyes that no one, not even her own mother, could escape the disease’s reaping grasp once the symptoms had set in. Knowing that there was little time left, the healer used her other, ghostly-pale hand to take her daughter’s and guide it to the dagger’s handle, gently wrapping the girl’s fingers around the coarse leather grip. By the time the moon had reached its peak, the horrific curse unleashed upon their village would finally awake...and there would be nothing but screams. Red-tinged tears fall down the healer’s face, her lips quivering as it came time for her to beg. “...You...you have to listen. I...don’t w-want to hurt you, Songbird...but I fear I will. W-Which is why...you have to do this.” She whispers, slowly pulling the dagger’s blade towards her chest, right over her heart, even as her daughter’s breathing quickens between sobs. “T-This will...keep me from coming back…” Her eyes moved over to the door that served as the entrance to their home. “...When I’m gone...you need to block the door. P-Put whatever you can in front of it. And whatever you d-do...do not go outside…stay quiet…” While her mother’s words confused the raven-haired girl, she knew that there was some sort of reasoning behind them. After all, mother always knew best...but that did not make this any less hard. Any less painful. “...M-Mama, I...I don’t want to be alone...wh-what will I…?” She tried to speak, but her sobs kept drowning whatever else could come out, her eyes now centered directly on the sinister edge of the dagger her hand now held. With her daughter’s fingers now wrapped around the dagger, the healer moves her hand to gently cup her child’s cheek, tips softly stroking against the alabaster skin. “...You won’t be. Someone v-very important is coming...he’ll help you. H-He’ll take you far away from here...somewhere better, I promise…” The tears now spill freely from the healer’s face, even as she reaffirms her resolve and returns her hand to join her daughter’s upon the dagger. “...Now. Now, my dear…” The dying woman swallows, and attempts to offer one more smile. “...sing, like I taught you. I love you...b-be strong, and live...” With that, the raven-haired girl grits her teeth, hanging her head and unable to meet her mother’s eyes as she obeys...as she always had. To fulfill her mother’s one final request. And thus, with a quiet voice but laden with grief, the young girl begins to sing for her mother… “Shut your eyes and listen close, As I sing under the moon, newly arose, So that your dream will take you far from here, To the home we keep, so far yet so near. A land of flowers, carried upon a gentle breeze, A place where one's heart knows, but never sees. Rest well my heart, forget all your fear, For the Light blesses us, even here, Forever loved are we, the children of the Mother, Cradled are we, long after our last whisper. Listen close, for on the distant gale, Are the prayers of our Mother, who has heard of our tale, When you have lost all hope, and have only despair, Know that you are not alone, our bonds kept safe in the air. Some day, one day, we all find our way home, To the place where fields of flowers endlessly roam. Rest well my beloved, forget all your fear, For the Stars watch over us, even here, Forever loved are we, the children of the Light, Cradled are we, for long into the night. So wipe away your tears, stifle your cries, Brush away the hurt, and all of the lies, When you have buried the pain, not to let it show, Know that home is near, by the Mother's eternal glow, For She guides the Stars, upon which our rest is made, And guides us back home, so that our scars may at last fade. Rest well my dear, forget all your fear, For the Heavens wait for us, even here, Forever loved are we, the flock of our Shepherd, Cradled are we, long after we are severed. One day, some day, I pray you'll be saved and left be, To make your way home, and finally see, That the world is not so cold, nor as cruel as it seems, And embrace the Light's warmth, borne upon gentle beams. Just listen to Her Song, to the promise it brings, To remove your burdens, as the hymn of Freedom rings. Such is my prayer, my own dream for you, Mother, may She listen, and make my wish true, May She keep you, guide you back to the blossoming trees, Where your pain will be gone, carried on a far away breeze… Yes, I sing, for a far away breeze…” By the time the hymn had reached its conclusion, the raven-haired girl could tell that her mother had ceased breathing. Choking back her sobs, she looks up once more, to take in the pale sight of the healer’s visage. A gentle smile remained upon her lips, a sense of peace resting over her. It was too much to bear. Averting her eyes once again, the girl whispers a prayer of her own...feeling the magic invoked by the song flow into the dagger’s blade, as she drives it home into her mother’s still heart. The child knelt there at the bedside, for what seemed like ages, before she finally stood back up onto her feet and turned away from the corpse resting upon the bed. There was still one thing she had to do, to fulfill her mother’s last words. Struggling to move whatever heavy furniture she could reasonably position in front of the cabin’s front door, she worked through a haze of tears as she steadily barricaded herself inside. Now, left by herself, she extinguishes the lights in the cabin, plunging her into absolute darkness. With nothing else to do, she sits herself down on the floor by the bed, pulling her knees up to her chest and burying her head into her arms...and waits. The raven-haired girl did not have to wait for long, before the panicked screams of the village’s children began to be sounded outside the cabin - along with the guttural, inhuman screams of the risen dead. Such screams would echo within the girl’s head for years to come, and continued to pound inside her skull...long after they had abruptly ceased. By the fifth day, the raven-haired girl was all that remained of the once-prosperous, peaceful village. The risen dead continued to shamble about outside, unaware as to her presence. On the sixth day, those very same walking corpses began to crumble apart and fall to the earth, plunging the ruined refuge into absolute silence. It was not until the seventh day that the village’s last child finally mustered the courage to step outside, both in search of food and to finally see what was left of her home. The sights would scar her till the end of her days...and perhaps long after. But before the girl could bring herself to leave, she had once last obligation to fulfill towards her fellow villagers. And so she grabbed Forgemaster Brutus’ shovel, and set to work… ________________________________________________________ Flicker. It was near high noon, on the eighth day, that the raven-haired girl would be disturbed in the midst of her grim task. Ever since her emergence from the cabin that had once been her home, she had labored away in an effort to dig graves, drag corpses, and bury what remained of the villagers. Her hands had long-since become cracked and bleeding from the work, and her general demeanor had fallen into something more akin to a zombie than that of a living girl. The shock of recent events had forced her to repress what emotions she had felt since the dreaded fourth night. However, even in her current state, there seemed to be some semblance of cognisance still active, as the distant sound of hoofbeats could be heard from the distant forest word that led towards the village. Pausing in the middle of digging the last of a whole, fresh graveyard - the grave meant for what remained of her mother - the raven-haired girl could not be certain whether the source of the noise would be a threat or not, and thus hastily dropped her shovel and ran to the cabin, shutting the door behind her and hiding herself underneath the dining table. Not long after she curled up beneath the table, she heard the hoofbeats draw even closer, until the sound of men calling out to one another could also be gleaned. Their voices sounded firm, authoritative...harsh, as they barked their orders. “...You know the drill! Scour the village, search for survivors! The Chantry does as it must - and ready the torches!” Within the cabin, the girl could hear as the men dismounted and began to spread themselves outside, kicking in what doors remained closed as they occasionally made shouts to the others to verify their status. “Clear!” “Clean here!” Until, finally, her own cabin door was kicked open and off its hinges, the door cracking and hanging off to the side as the sound of heavy, plated footsteps slowly entered the room. The girl flinched, holding her breath as she curled up even more, remaining perfectly still in the hope of not being seen. The first indication she received as to the identity of the person who had arrived, was their retching due to the heavy scent of death and decay in the cabin room. A woman, from the sounds of it. As the armored woman delved further into the cabin, she would spot the corpse still remaining on the bed, a grunt escaping her from the stench...and a weary sigh. “...Poor woman...I wonder if she died alone...” The mysterious warrior muttered to herself, still unaware as to the young girl’s presence. After another moment, the woman has herself another sigh, grumbling. “...Curses. This one died of the plague after all.” “Tessarius Tutor! What did you find?” The voice of a man - the same one that had been issuing orders outside - called out to the armored woman from the cabin’s doorway, as a similarly-attired man strode inside. The raven-haired girl tried her best to remain still, but the need to breathe was beginning to supersede her fear. At the man’s inquiry, the mysterious warrior-woman turns on her heel to face him, replying as any soldier would to a superior. “A body, Centurion. I believe she died of the plague that was reported.” There is a sound of disapproval from this ‘Centurion’, along with a heavy sigh of his own. “Yes, I see the pustules. A mass grave site was reported, so we believe that there may be a survivor or several here. We will have to-” The man is cut off when the raven-haired child attempts to take a breath, and in doing so, moves just enough to cause the floorboard beneath her to creak. Both of the mysterious intruders fell silent, before advancing towards the table. The man raises his greave-protected right foot and uses it to kick the table back and out of the way, exposing the girl underneath as she flinches and quivers where she is, like a frightened mouse. With the table gone, she could at last see the faces of the two warriors, even partially-obscured by their helmets as they were. The woman bore a pale visage, blue eyes, and traces of golden hair could be seen at the edges of her helm, while the man was of darker complexion, with dark brown eyes and a stern expression - one growing ever more dour as he glares down at the raven-haired child. “A survivor indeed…” After a couple of uneasy moments pass by, the woman bends her knees and slowly lowers herself, her eyes focused on the frightened child in front of them. Adopting a smile in an attempt to ease the girl’s fears, she tries to talk to her. “Do not fear, we are not here to hurt you, child...are you alone? Is there anyone else here?” The girl does not answer, opting to instead remain silent. The Centurion reaches to his waist, his hand seizing hold of the hilt of his gladius, and begins to withdraw it from its scabbard - but he is stopped by the hand of the woman standing next to him, who is looking at him with an expression of horror. “Stop! What are you doing?!” The woman asked, glancing between the frightened girl and her superior. Keeping his eyes locked onto the shaking child, in case she were to try and run, he answers his subordinate with a cold, harsh tone. “You know the protocol, Tessarius. Any and all survivors within these villages are to be executed, lest they spread the disease elsewhere. Now, unhand me.” The Centurion’s voice takes on a threatening edge to it towards the end, as if daring the woman to continue to hold him back. “She is but a child! Ask the Lord-Chanter to-” “Ask me to, what, Tessarius?” Another voice joined the fray, once more coming from the cabin’s doorway. This time, from a man wearing an odd combination of priestly robes and light, leather armor, adorned in the divine symbols of the Mother’s Chant and her holy Chantry. His hair, cut short in military fashion, was as pale as snow, his face featuring the wear that came with middle age. But it was his eyes, the piercing, all-knowing blues, that defined his visage. The Centurion raises his own voice to answer, violently shrugging off the woman’s grip as he did so. “Nothing, my Lord-Chanter. We will handle this situation promptly.” The man reassured the priest, his eyes fixating once more on the shaking child. But he does not get the chance to do as he promises, as the Lord-Chanter’s own response came immediately after. “Stay your blade, Centurion...the girl does not harbor the plague.” The reply came calmly, yet firm, as to dissuade any attempts to disagree or contest his assertion. The Centurion stays silent, staring hard at the raven-haired girl, before he briskly nods and removes his hand from the pommel of his gladius. “As you command, Lord-Chanter.” Waiting for a dismissive nod of the priest’s head, the Centurion then walks past him and back out into the village proper, barking more orders to his men with perhaps a hint of added heat to his words. The Lord-Chanter waits for his Centurion to pass him by, before he fully enters the cabin and looks down at the raven-haired child. His expression doesn’t shift, remaining as calm and stone-faced, but there is a glint of recognition in his blue stare. He then shifts his attention to the corpse laid out upon the nearby bed, and walks over to stand before it. For an uncomfortable period of time, the Lord-Chanter stares at the body, before he finally speaks once again. “Tessarius Tutor, was it?” The armored woman, nervous as she was, had waited to be addressed and directly dismissed, until the Lord-Chanter spoke to her. Swallowing, the woman places a fist against her chest and confirms. “Yes, Lord-Chanter. What do you require of me?” The Lord-Chanter does not turn to look at them, his eyes only for the body before him. But he continues, as authoritative as always. “You physically obstructed your superior from conducting his duty, before receiving orders to do so from someone of higher rank. Such behavior is unacceptable, and you will be chastised for it.” The Lord-Chanter informs, but before the trepidation grows too much, he proceeds. “For the time-being, as part of your punishment, you will be responsible for the child’s safekeeping. I trust you will fulfill this obligation to the fullest of your abilities.” The order came as a small surprise to the Tessarius, but she does not hesitate to respond in confirmation. “Yes, my Lord. I understand.” When the Lord-Chanter offers a single-worded dismissal, the woman turns back around to the child, still curled up on the floor and fearful. Crouching down, she kneels in front of the girl. “It is alright...you are in good hands.” She accentuates her words by extending both of her hands towards the girl for her to take, smiling. “Do you have a name…?” The raven-haired girl stares at the armored woman in front of her, blue eyes wide as they took in all of her features. Despite the intimidating attire the soldier in front of her wore, the face she bore was nothing but gentle. A welcoming, nurturing smile meant to instill some sense of ease in the traumatized child. Which, perhaps to both of their surprise, succeeded to some small degree as the girl shakily reached out to take both of the Tessarius’ hands. “...Valeria…” The child answered in a whisper. If the name came as a shock to the Lord-Chanter, he did not seem to show it, though the woman certainly seemed to find it a rather curious circumstance. “Valeria…? A lovely name. I am Justinia.” She introduces herself, gently squeezing the girl’s hands with her own, before she steadily works at bringing them both up onto their feet. “Now, come along...it is time we left.” The raven-haired girl hesitates, looking over to where the Lord-Chanter stood over the corpse of her mother. “...B-But…” “It is alright...Lord Camena will take care of her.” Justinia promises to the young Valeria, maintaining her hold on the girl’s hands before slowly beginning to lead them both out of the cabin, and onto the streets. Already, the Chantry’s soldiery had begun to set the village ablaze, the homes of dozens alight and billowing smoke upward to the sky. Justinia did not allow Valeria to linger, instead guiding her to the mount she owned, helping the child up onto the saddle, and then joining her soon after to trot away from the village. With the Tessarius’ arms wrapped around her, and the rocking of the beast’s movements, for the first time in days the young girl felt safe enough to finally shut her eyes. And within moments, she was out, lost to the blissful relief that was slumber… ...But that simply set the stage, did it not? Your life started as a unique Hell of its own. And it continued to be such, did it not? Until the very end. And even then, She did not let you find the rest you craved. No, She seems content to let you suffer. But perhaps that is alright. After all...we will be able to see each other again, very soon...

#TheSeventhChantry #7thChantry #JustiniaTutor #Aurora #FFXIV #EchoesOfAnotherLife #Memories #Roleplay #ValeriaCamena

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diamondcitydarlin · 5 years ago

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So, after that last episode (that mysteriously I also seemed to have predicted- the whole Guillermo finding a group of hunters thing) I’ve run away with my second theory that Guillermo may find himself in a relationship with Craig Robinson’s character, just complicating things further and putting certain things to light between him and Nandor that neither of them really explored before. Namely jealousy. But in talking about this with my husband we ended up writing/RPing a scene, following Nandor noticing that Guillermo’s been getting distracted by his phone a lot more, smiling and laughing at it in a way he didn’t before.

Nandor takes his confusion to the other vampires at some point, and they had this to say,

Nadja says definitively, “Well, I don't know how human phones work, but I'm telling you, he's got a bit of crumpet on the side.”

Nandor grimaces. “Nadja...I know Guillermo isn't...small but you didn’t have to go there. Also I don’t see what any of this has to do with human food.”

Nadja rolls her eyes. “NO. I mean he's fucking someone. Regularly, even. And probably sending lots of naughty little nudie pics to his new lover.”

A look of simultaneous horror and realization crosses Nandor’s face before he’s decided that is an impossibility. It must be. It has to be.

“....nooo....that's silly...” he laughs, albeit nervous. “That wouldn't happen...!” But his look at the camera seems searching, as if he needs more confirmation that what Nadja’s suggesting absolutely, definitely would never, ever, ever happen. Ever.

Laszlo meanwhile, pauses from nursing his pipe to add in no uncertain terms, “She's right, he's definitely getting it up the arse from someone.”

But this is more insult than Nandor can humor and he stomps his foot. “Ok that's enough! None of that is happening!!!”

“I actually agree with them,” Colin adds from his corner chair where everyone to this point had forgotten he was sitting. “All the signs are there.”

And Colin indisputably has more knowledge towards modern, human behavior than any of them present...but then, he is Colin.

“Do you ACTUALLY agree with them or are you just trying to infuriate me?” Nandor challenges, to which Colin replies flatly, “Yes.”

“What does it matter, anyway?” Nadja interjects with a sweep of her hands. “Has it affected his ability to serve?”

Nandor thinks for a moment, perhaps desperate, because he needs a logical reason to be consumed by this.

“Well, he-...! He gets distracted sometimes and it’s very irritating!”

Laszlo does a cursory look around the space of their library. “Seems to be the same mediocre work he’s always done.”

“He obviously still grooms you, as you don’t look like a complete cretin,” Nadja adds.

Having seen that this was a complete mistake to bring up with his roommates, Nandor backtracks. “Alright, let’s just forget it. There are other, more pressing matters to discuss-”

“Oh no, I think this is worth exploring,” Colin says, because of course, and then in his usual unassumingly ignorant tone of voice, “Why would it bother you that Guillermo has a private life if he’s still doing his job? I’m confused.”

To be sure, he isn’t.

Nadja’s eyes go wide in realization. “Wait, wait, wait!!! You-...!” She points to Nandor as if there was some confusion as to who she was talking about. “You’re jealous, aren’t you?”

“You haven’t gone soft for that little creep after all this time, have you?” Laslzo asks, though his tone is more grave and warning.

“I-...I haven’t-...! No, what-...I don’t even know what you’re talking about...!” Nandor attempts to deflect, but it’s less than convincing.

“Perhaps...” Colin suggests, once again in that grating, flat tone of voice. “Perhaps you wish...that you were the one...he was sending naughty pictures of himself to?”

“He does!” Nadja exclaims before Nandor can defend himself, and then she’s gripping to Laszlo’s arm in panic and remorse. “Oh, my darling...he’s fallen in love with his familiar...”

“That is very dangerous ground to tread, old chap.” Laszlo’s gaze is fixed firmly to Nandor’s; meanwhile the latter looks like a deer caught in the headlights.

Nadja, now overly sympathetic, has risen from her seat on the couch to give Nandor’s hands a patronizing pat. It’s somehow worse.

“Nandor, believe me when I say this...it’s never a good idea to entertain feelings for a mortal. It doesn’t end well.”

“Mainly in old age and death,” Colin needlessly adds.

Nandor once again attempts to assert his position as former warrior-conqueror, that this is not the case and he will not tolerate anymore suggestions of this nature, but Nadja has silenced him quickly with a maternal finger to his lips and a soft, “Hush now, you stupid, stupid, dumb little lovesick vampire. We will sort it all out.”

Then to (mainly) Laszlo, “We will have to sort this out.”

“You’re damn right we will,” he agrees. “We’ll have no truck with vampire that thinks there’s any kind of future with a bloodsack. Either you turn him or he goes.”

Nandor’s gone from aforementioned deer-in-headlights to little lost duck adrift on the ocean, shaking his head ‘no’ in a panic. “N-n-no...no, no, no, it doesn’t have to come to that-”

“It’s going to come to something!” Laszlo rallies back.

“Yes,” Nadja agrees, though softer. “We have few options left at this point. He must be turned and live as your eternal mate, or you must dismiss him, or-”

Then, Laszlo’s very helpful, demonstrative miming of a slice across the neck. “We -WHIIIEEECKK- him. Post-haste.”

Nandor’s shaking his head ‘no’ very violently at this point and trying to backpeddle the whole situation, but it seems the consensus has been made.

“Very well,” Nadja agrees, albeit with the same remorse as before. “Perhaps a month then? A month to make a decision. This can’t be easy.”

“Gizmo’s very lucky I cannot deny my good lady wife anything,” Laszlo says pointedly to Nandor. “A month seems generous...but so be it. Do something about this, or we will.”

Nandor’s companions begin to disperse then, and as he is still desperate and a bit disoriented from the whole confrontation he panics.

“Eh-!! Uhm-...wait!” And once he has their attention, “Listen to my wooords! You will forget eeeverythiiing I just saiiid...”

He must have known somewhere deep down this was going to be as embarrassing at it was futile. Laszlo’s glaring unimpressed, Colin gives him a judgmental eye-narrowing, and Nadja now pats him insultingly on the cheek.

“Poor, poor, stupid little vampire...” she sighs sadly to no one in particular, and then they’re all gone, leaving Nandor in the wake of this all-too-sudden, all-too-disturbing revelation.

#wwdits #wwdits tv #wwdits season 2 #wwdits spoiler #spoilers #guillermo x nandor #nandor x guillermo #laszlo cravensworth #wwdits nadja #colin robinson #ficlet #guillermo de la cruz

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chiseler · 4 years ago

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Maxwell Bodenheim

In Letters from Bohemia, Ben Hecht declares his friend Maxwell Bodenheim “more disliked, derided, denounced, beaten up, and kicked down more flights of stairs than any poet of whom I have heard or read.” In his lifetime Bodenheim was at least as well known for his drunk and dissolute behavior as for his writing. Today he’s mostly remembered for the tawdry way he died.

He grew up poor and Jewish in smalltown Mississippi. He was bright but viciously boorish, physically handsome yet repulsively slovenly, and argumentative to a fault, with a genius for the insult that could end any discussion, usually with his being punched in the mouth. As young men Bodenheim and Hecht were the pranksters of the Chicago Renaissance. According to Allen Churchill’s The Improper Bohemians, they once filled a hall for a literary debate on the topic “Resolved: That People Who Attend Literary Debates Are Imbeciles.”

Hecht strode center-stage to announce that he would take the affirmative. Then he stated, “The affirmative rests.” Bodenheim shambled forward, scrutinized his confident opponent, and said, “You win.”

Bodenheim – Bogie to his long-suffering friends – was twenty-two when he blew into Greenwich Village with other Chicago émigrés in 1915, and instantly made a name for himself in the neighborhood as a poet of promise. Reading his facile, gaudy verses now, it’s easy to think that it was the brute force of his sociopathic presence, rather than his poetry, that convinced the best poets in the Village at the time that he was one of them, potentially even the greatest of them:

You have a morning-glory face

Whose edges are sensitive to light

And curl in beneath the burden of a smile.

Remembered silence returns to the morning-glory

And lattices its curves

With shades of golden reverberations.

Then the morning-glory’s heart careens to loves

Whose scent beats on the sky-walls of your soul.

Tellingly, those not directly in his orbit seem not to have been fooled by the clever romance-novel sham of such verses – and neither, apparently, was Bodenheim himself, though he would go on roaring about his genius for decades. Hecht records that after entering 223 poetry contests and failing to win a single one, he took to signing his letters to editors “Maxwell Bodenheim, 224th ranking U.S.A. poet.”

He did have a real talent for scandal, easy enough to generate during Greenwich Village’s prolonged drunken orgy in the Prohibition years. His haughty, insulting demeanor, and his habit of trying to steal other men’s women right under their noses, got him regularly socked on the jaw and thrown out of bars, soirees and the fauxhemian revels at Webster Hall.

Turning from poetry to prose, through the 1920s he wrote a string of best-selling, sensational potboilers like Replenishing Jessica, about a free-loving bohemian, Georgie May, about a fallen prostitute, and Naked on Roller Skates, about a middle-aged “onetime hobo, circus-pegger, doughboy, sailor, anarchist, con man, all-time sensationalist and wanderer of the world” who leaves a small town with a much younger woman who “wanted to try everything at least once.” They sound better than they read. Hecht called them “hack work with flashes of tenderness, wit, and truth in them.” When the Society for the Suppression of Vice brought Bodenheim to trial in 1925 on an obscenity charge for Replenishing Jessica, his defense lawyer used a familiar tactic of demanding that the prosecutor read the entire text aloud to prove his case. Judge, jury and the reporters covering the trial dozed as the prosecutor droned on and on, and the unaroused jury voted Bodenheim not guilty. Mayor Jimmy Walker agreed with the verdict. “No girl was ever seduced by a book,” he quipped.

For a bohemian poet, commercial success and celebrity could bring on a full-blown personality crisis (as it would do Jackson Pollock, Jack Kerouac and Kurt Cobain). Bodenheim squandered the money he made from his novels on drink and gambling, as though he couldn’t throw it away fast enough. He preferred to demand loans and cadge drinks from everyone around him, like a true bohemian poet should. Meanwhile, his reputation in these years as a daring, risqué writer attracted a cloud of what we’d call groupies today, many of them the sort of teenagers from the outer boroughs and the hinterlands who flocked to the Village in the 1920s to throw off the shackles of mainstream morality and abandon themselves to the neighborhood’s non-stop pagan revels.

He took his pick. One was Gladys Loeb, 18, from the Bronx. In 1928, he ended a brief fling with her, adding that her poetry was doggerel. Her landlady soon found her with her head in the gas oven, barely clinging to life, and to Bodenheim’s portrait. A few weeks later he did the same thing to twenty-two-year-old Virginia Drew, who threw herself into the Hudson and succeeded where Gladys had failed. When police went to question Bodenheim about Drew’s suicide, he’d slipped off to stay with fellow Villager Harry Kemp in Provincetown. Gladys, having recovered from her own suicide attempt, followed him there – trailing her irate father, cops and reporters. Bodenheim talked his way out of their clutches, but not out of the newspapers all over the country, which had a field day with lurid tales about the Greenwich Village Lothario.

Then came Aimee Cortez, widely feted as “the Mayoress of Greenwich Village.” She earned the title by stripping naked at private parties and Webster Hall shindigs and gyrating a wildly erotic dance. According to Churchill, this display sometimes ended with her going off with some lucky male, but other times she’d stop abruptly, with a look of terror and confusion, and run off. In a later era she’d be prescribed a drug for this clearly disturbed behavior, but in the Village of the late 1920s, where “a hideous lust… pervaded the air” as Bodenheim’s My Life and Loves in Greenwich Village put it, she was merely celebrated as the queen of the modern-day bacchantes. Not long after Gladys and Virginia made the papers, Aimee was found with her head in her own oven, also clutching Bodenheim’s portrait. She was dead at nineteen.

Bodenheim was indirectly implicated in the sad end of another lover, a teenager from the outer boroughs with the improbable name Dorothy Dear. When she wasn’t with him in his MacDougal Street apartment, he wrote her love letters that she carried in her purse. One afternoon she was aboard a rush hour subway train heading from Times Square to the Village when it derailed at a faulty switch, killing sixteen passengers, including Dorothy. Bodenheim’s love letters were found scattered around the wreckage.

By the end of the 1920s Bodenheim was a wreck himself. From the 1930s until his death he was a fixture on the streets and in the bars of the Village, by turns annoying and sad-making, decaying before his old friends’ eyes into a stinking, toothless ghost, “tottering drunkenly to sleep on flophouse floors, shabby and gaunt as any Bowery bum,” as Hecht put it. Still, Hecht gallantly added, “Bogie hugged his undiminished riches – his poet’s vocabulary and his genius for winning arguments. He won nothing else.” He cranked out more cheap novels, drank the money, and stooped to hawking his poems to tourists in Washington Square for a quarter each. Wiseacres in the bars fed him gin and laughed at his drunken mumblings and rants, which sometimes yielded a famous line like “Greenwich Village is the Coney Island of the soul.”

Poets were the main entertainment at Max Gordon’s Village Vanguard in the mid-1930s. Gordon couldn’t afford to pay them; they performed for whatever change the patrons tossed at their feet. Poet Eli Siegel, later founder of the Aesthetic Realism movement, was the emcee in the early years, but the crowd really came to see three ghosts of the Village Past – Joe Gould, Harry Kemp and Maxwell Bodenheim. They hung out there because Gordon tolerated them and his patrons were easy marks for a few free drinks. In his memoir Live at the Village Gate, Gordon describes how Siegel would call Gould out of the crowd with the cry, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Harvard terrier and boulevardier, Joseph Ferdinand Gould!” Gould would shuffle up to the spotlight and do his schtick, while Bodenheim, tall and imperious, would stalk the shadows at the back, “point his finger, and shout, ‘Eli Siegel! I hate you, Eli Siegel. You rat!’” Gordon continues:

Eli would wait for Bodenheim to shape up so he could call on him to recite. But it was no use. Bodenheim, swirling crazily, eyes glazed, arms outstretched, would suddenly stop and point his finger at a frightened girl who had refused him a dance during intermission. “Rat!” he’d shout at her.

Despite the frightening deterioration of his physical and mental hygiene, Bodenheim still attracted a certain type of desperate woman, usually in decline herself. He met the last of them in 1951 when Ruth Fagan bought a poem from him with her last quarter. She was thirty-two, he was a fifty-nine-year-old derelict, and within a couple of weeks they were going around as Mr. and Mrs. Bodenheim, though it’s not clear they ever bothered to make it official. They decayed together for the next couple of years, chronically broke and drunk, descending from cheap rooming houses to flophouses to sleeping in hallways and doorways. She turned tricks when she could, and he beat her when he found out. In 1952 they made a horrific spectacle of themselves at a fancy reunion for surviving members of the original Chicago Renaissance group, where he panhandled the guests while she propositioned them.

If the Bodenheim of the early 1950s was a disgusting or amusing clown to the tourists, and an embarrassment and bother to his old friends, he was something of a martyred saint to the generation of bohemians who came to the Village after World War Two. In his headlong descent into the abyss, his lust for the extremes of degradation, his lust for lust itself, he was like a dark archangel of negative capability for them, representing the ultimate rejection of bourgeois virtue and mainstream values, even to the point of total self-destruction. He comes up several times in the published diaries of Judith Malina, co-founder of the Living Theatre, from this period. One night in 1951 she and her husband Julian Beck were in the San Remo, the dark and smoky bar at Bleecker and MacDougal Streets that Bodenheim often haunted:

A ragged drunk approaches our table. In terrible shape. Ash blond hair askew. He lurches forward, his hands resting on the table. Directly to Julian: “What’s your name?”

“My name is Julian Beck.”

“My name is Maxwell Bodenheim. I’m an idiotic poet.”

And he turns and moves off before we can speak.

The late Roy Metcalf, who was a young newspaper reporter in the early 1950s, also encountered Bodenheim in the San Remo. “Bodenheim had a great face, an alcohol-ravaged face,” he recalled. “Once a guy from uptown wanted to see Greenwich Village, so we went down to the San Remo. There was Bodenheim. He said, 'Bring him over, let’s buy him a drink.’ He expected Bodenheim to say something. Bodenheim by that time was so paralyzed by alcohol that all he could do was bray, 'Aaaaargh.’”

In 1953 Malina went into the Waldorf Cafeteria on Sixth Avenue, where artists hung out. The food was lousy, the lighting made people look so bad they nicknamed it the Waxworks, and the other patrons tended to be bums, drug addicts, tough guys and cops. The staff was not particularly welcoming to arty boho types. So naturally that’s where Bodenheim and Ruth went to celebrate his birthday. Malina writes that a friend stole a pumpkin pie from the counter as a present for Bodenheim. “A cop sees him, but is somehow content with my explanation that Maxwell Bodenheim is a great poet and that his birthday should be celebrated. The counterman is not so generous: 'I ain’t doin’ this for love.’ We all eat. Ruth Bodenheim curses the cafeteria. Some junkies come and tell horrible tales of hospitals and arrests. One taps his eye with a knife to show us that it’s glass. Ruth Bodenheim smiles in an aristocratic manner: 'I’d never have believed it wasn’t real,’ as if she were consoling the owner of false jewels.”

“Do we not idolize Maxwell Bodenheim although we are sometimes loath to talk to him and always ashamed of our condescension to him?” Malina wonders in another entry. “What we admire is Bodenheim’s refusal to resist. We fight all the time, resisting temptation. We admire those who don’t. Even if it’s suicidal.” And later: “Even self-contempt when fierce enough is magnificent. The virtue of the extreme is its extremity. Nature loves extremes as much as she loathes a vacuum.”

In 1953, Ruth took up with a violent, mentally unstable dishwasher named Harold Weinberg. One night in the winter of 1954 the three of them wound up in Weinberg’s room off the Bowery. Bodenheim roused himself from a drunken stupor to see Ruth and Weinberg having sex. He attacked Weinberg, who pulled out a .22 and shot him through the heart. Then Weinberg stabbed Ruth in the chest. The last photos of Bodenheim show him and Ruth lying dead in the squalid room.

“The hideous death of Bodenheim blankets the Village in a funereal spirit,” Malina wrote. “Who dares confess to the wrenching excitement of seeing a companion’s mauled corpse on the front page of every newspaper, and all of us knowing that the worst has again triumphed?”

Cops picked up Weinberg a few days later. At his trial he called his victims Commie rats and shouted that he “did the world a favor” by getting rid of them. He sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” as he was led out of the courtroom and off to Bellevue.

Today, Bodenheim is remembered more for this tabloid end than for any other achievement. Even his memoir was a dispiriting sham. My Life and Loves in Greenwich Village, published posthumously in 1954, was ghostwritten by a hack who, like everyone else in the Village, had bought him drinks to listen to his drunken ramblings. It’s a loose collection of vignettes, anecdotes, and racy gossip that was already antique when the book appeared. His old friend Hecht, who sent a check for $50 to help pay for Bodenheim’s cheapjack funeral, based his 1958 Off-Broadway play Winkelberg on him. (“There was never a man as irritating as Winkelberg.”) It ran for a month at the Renata Theatre on Bleecker Street, then sank into oblivion along with much of Bodenheim’s own writing.

by John Strausbaugh

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fencesandfrogs · 4 years ago

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“i love you”: ambiguity in media

spoilers for she-ra. the entire show. especially the last season. but if you don’t care i’ve also added context. so it’s not mandatory watching.

spacer gif for spoilers. also cause its cute.

okay so i’m still thinking about the scene where glimmer says, “i love you,” and bow kisses her on the temple, and it’s just the cutest thing and my heart says “squee”.

i wrote something about gay media & the necessary differences in gay tales and ATM it has not been posted bc i routinely shuffle my queue but the basic thesis of it is: gay romance stories are inherently different from straight ones, because it is impossible to separate them from homophobia. and i kind of ran into a wall writing it because homophobia is really hard to ignore on earth because its omnipresent and it dramatically affects gay youth growing up.

and then i watched she-ra, which has lesbians*, in case you didn’t know, and also basically zero homophobia.

*also gays, but the titular character is a lesbian, so.

which damn, was very refreshing. like. yeah. sign me up for that.

so. adora and catra are adorable lesbians w/ shared traumatic experiences and their character arcs are interesting and wonderful and there’s a lot of great analysis of that already and here’s one that sums it up better than i ever could:

youtube

love that. they’re adorable. i love them.

bow & glimmer are also best friends who get together at the end of the show & have a lot of parallels to catra and adora minus the trauma and also including crushing weights of responsibility.

uhh so catra & glimmer both make a mistake at one point during the show that basically irreparably wrecks the world and requires sacrifice of life to solve. adora is the intended sacrifice each time but this isn’t about adora, i just want to give context for this.

so catra has the explanation of trauma and the scared behaviors of a traumatized teen. like. she makes mistakes for an understandable reason. again. not about her. just giving context.

glimmer on the other hand basically throws a fit that her friends have other friends. i mean. glimmer has problems but her mistakes are not like, “you know if you were raised in a loving home this prob wouldn’t have happened” because she was raised in a loving home. it’s more like “you know if you didn’t become queen at age, like, 17, this probably wouldn’t have happened.”

(side note, i don’t know how old the characters in she-ra are. i read them as 15-17 in the beginning of the series and 18-20 by the end, and i’m just not really sure. because you know, cartoons & child soldiers do not accurate age placing make. catra and adora’s arc speaks to me ages 15-18ish because that is when i had a similar arc.

according to the wiki adora starts around 17 and ends around 20. which is w/in my own estimations i’m just commenting.)

right so glimmer apologizes to bow and is all “look you don’t have to forgive me, i don’t have a right to that, but i’m not going to stop trying to earn your forgiveness,” and bow, well, he says “okay”

and. you know. i feel that.

(more side notes: i, age 17ish, broke up w my boyfriend. for reasons. we got back together. for other reasons. repairing the bond of trust is hard. because i was not secure that he loved me, and he was not secure that i wouldn’t leave if something went wrong. so you know. i feel glimmer, here.

yes, she made a mistake and no, she does not have a right to forgiveness. but she’s also a kid, who has had one friend for her entire life, and is only just beginning to learn how to share friends, and she thinks she lost him, and that desperation and rejection is painful. she was lashing out, and she never intended this to happen.)

so glimmer & bow throughout the show have romantic tension, but in a soft way. in a, bow goes to a ball with someone else and glimmer gets jealous but it’s also directly stated she’s jealous because she’s sharing her friend way.

plus there’s a scene that definitely has some strong glimmer x adora vibes is what i’m saying

it’s not this specific scene but idk what to search for to find it & i’m not fighting w tumblr to include external images again i’ve been hurt before.

anyway.

so when glimmer says, “i love you,” my heart pounds in a new way, because what does she mean by that? does she love him?

and at some point in this adora has a fantasy future where bow and glimmer are together & it’s adorable but i’m mentioning to explicitly say that it’s not relevant because bow and glimmer r def not together before this moment.

anyway bow kisses glimmer on the forehead and my heart go “thumpthumpthumpthumpthump” real real fast and it’s cute and i text my boyfriend a bunch of hearts because that’s what i do when i see cute couples i’m a soft gay nerd.

and the thing is? i’m also thinking, “wow there is so much ambiguity” there.

and then. i realized. this is why gay romance is fundamentally different. because american culture is not very touch-y, especially across gendered lines.

& i have a very physically affectionate family. i will cuddle the homies. i will kiss them on the temple. (ok i won’t do that bc my boyfriend would not like that n i respect that it’s legit i kiss him on the temple instead. mb i’ll write about boundaries in relationships where people have different understandings of physical affection.) so like? did not occur to me before to discuss this.

but there’s a huge ambiguity in gay romance. it’s hard to write gay romance that’s explicitly gay (especially wlw since men r less affectionate & more stereotyped in media imo and that’s another discussion but there’s a reason i’m focusing on catra and adora in she-ra’s gay relationships) without slapping a huge “THEY’RE LESBIANS, HAROLD” on it, so like.

yeah. it does get a label.

& i mean. she-ra is the big gay. it could have gone hard queer baiting, but even if that was a possibility, adora and catra are too hard-coded to Love Love each other. they have a best friends to rivals (to enemies) to lovers thing going on, it’s hard to miss. there is no doubt in my mind what catra means when she tells adora she loves her.

this is from before the confession and just. look at them. they are gay.

& meanwhile glimmer and bow have the soft affection, the feelings which could be read either way.

objectively the same hold, but he’s saving her life. catra leaps into adora’s arms, bow catches her. (after he just caught her before:

& it does not escape my attention that bow was the one who caught her from the void of space, not the stronger & arguably better adora/she-ra.

okay so bow & glimmer = adorable, and i’m v happy they got together. but it was an interesting application of tropes in that i don’t think you could tell this romance in a very different context. it just. it doesn’t work right.

i think glimmer & bow end up a will they/won’t they couple in a different context. and that works, yeah, but that’s the point. gay tropes r just...different.

and it’s really hard to switch them because you kind of need a fantasy world where physical affection is much more common and we don’t have the baggage of gender in friendships.

just for fun, here’s one last couple. mermista and seahawk. i’m not gonna spend a long time on them i just wanted to say maybe i’m gay but it took me until season five to realize they’re together and i think they’ve been together the whole show.

& i think that’s because she-ra does a really good job at depicting the post-homophobia, post-sexism universe. (sexism plays a big part in all this ik i didn’t talk about it but some other time)

so you get the opportunity to have these fantastic stories of relationships through new lenses. & i appreciate that. i appreciate getting to have a “he’s my friend” (i love him) “he’s mine” character moment with a new kind of angst. (glimmer: the gay, who loves her best friend but also loves her best friend, vs glimmer: the hypothetical straight, who loves her best friend, and her best friend loves her. the difference is subtle but it’s there.)

anyway yeah a lot of words. forehead kisses kill me because i have a weak, gay, heart. uhhhh media & tropes & telling explicitly gay romances requires us to be able to shake around what role friendship plays in the relationship arc, and something we’re not entirely up for yet, as a culture.

i leave u with this bc no one has made a gif of their actual kiss

#glimbow #she ra #she-ra #media analysis #romance #q #mine #txt #13th #December #2020 #December 13th 2020 #rant #essay

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rachelbethhines · 5 years ago

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Tangled Salt Marathon - Before Ever After

So we’re back and kicking off the salt marathon proper with the pilot movie, Before Ever After. Lets dig in shall we.

Summray: Six months after the events of Tangled, Rapunzel is settling into life as princess of Corona, but is unable to enjoy it with the constant protection of her father's guards. When she and her lady-in-waiting, Cassandra, sneak out of the castle, they come upon some black rock spikes that magically bring back her long blonde hair. Meanwhile, a figure from Frederic’s past is out for revenage.

Lack of Set Up

Right off the bat we got our first flaw. The show opens with a song reintroducing our main characters, where they are right now in the story, and showing off their goals and personal conflicts. All save for Cassandra that is.

This is Cass. You wouldn’t know it from the pilot but she is the secondary protagonist of the show. (I’m sorry Eugene fans, like it or not she is) And that’s precisely the problem. She gets no introduction. She’s just there. Her entire motivations, goals, and interpersonal conflicts are suppose to drive the story line of the last season and a half, but we have no idea what any of those things are from her beginning episode.

The show-runners have tried to excuse this with wanting Cassandra’s arc to be a ‘slow burn’ but that’s not how a slow burn actually works. A ‘slow burn’ is either a background element/character being established early and then reveled to be plot important later, (think McGucket in Gravity Falls) or a prominent character being given a seemingly shallow goal/motivation and then slowly peeling back the layers and showing more complexity behind that goal/motivation. (like Zuko in Avatar)

Cass is neither of these things. She’s not a background element. She’s there from the word go and given the same amount of screen time and focus as both Raps and Eugene through out. But she’s not been established like Zuko either. We won’t know what motivates her until four episodes in, it’ll take another four episodes to show all of her important interpersonal relationships, and it’ll take a whole S3 seasons just to give us a clear goal.

These are not things your audience should be left guessing about. They are what propel your story forward and must be made clear from the get go.

Not a Flaw, But...

I don’t like that the series blends several different time periods and cultures together into a grab bag of world building.

Now this is an opinion, not a critique. What’s the difference?

A flaw in writing is a failure to communicate your ideas clearly to your audience. The lack of introduction for Cassandra, as mentioned above, actively gets in the way of the story the writers want to tell. That is a flaw.

But this? This an idea that the creators wanted to use and they conveyed it quite well. They use various fashions to show off different characters’ personalities, anachronistic technology in order to make certain plot points happen, and visual cues from other cultures around the world to give a feeling of fantasy to the series. It’s very well done. I just don’t like it.

I personally prefer a more anchored take on world building with an actual designated time period and place, even in a fantasy world. Once again is this just an opinion and there’s no right or wrong here. Just preference.

And I bring this distinction up now to show that one can have both personal preferences and still give valid criticisms. The existence one does not invalidate the other. Some sub-sections of the fandom love to shut down any sort of critical examinations by acting like having a different opinion is grounds for dismissing critique entirely.

That’s not going to fly here. Which brings me to...

Lack of Follow Through

Initially, I enjoyed the conflict presented here between Rapunzel and Eugene. Young couples just starting out often have disagreements on what direction they want their lives to go in. It’s very real and very normal and I know actual people who have been there or are currently there right now.

Unfortunately there’s no follow through.

The core conflict is never actually resolved on screen at any point in the show. The characters keep putting it off and then it’s suddenly forgotten about by S3. We the audience are just left to assume that they worked things out some where off screen.

If the lack of intro to Cass showcases the series problem with establishing plot points, then the treatment of Eugene’s and Rapunzel’s relationship shows us the other half of that coin. The show often steps things up or makes a big deal out of stuff that is never again brought up or resolved in a satisfying manner.

Failure to Learn

It also shows the fundamental flaw behind the premise of the series. Rapunzel never learns.

Oh she changes through out the show. The Raps we see here is not the Raps we end up with. But how she develops doesn’t involve her owning up to any of flaws that she presents.

This conflict with Eugene requires showing the audience that Rapnuzel is not good with communication and by the end she is still not any good with communicating. However, Eugene, and by extension the show itself, just gives her a free pass.

The show wants to be a coming of age story, but fails at the one thing required for it to be a coming of age story.

Show Don’t Tell

Getting back to Cass, another problem with the show is it’s over reliance on exposition. In a visual medium, like animation, you want to show the audience the information they need to know when ever possible. You can have exposition from time to time, but you generally want to use it sparingly and not rely on it for really important stuff, like idk... say introducing an important character relationship.

This scene actually showcases the issue quite well. We are told two things about Cass here.

1. That she collects weapons, indicating is a warrior/tomboy

2. That Cass is the Captain's daughter.

The first one is shown to us, by seeing her collection, and the second is told to us through a single line. Of the two which would you think is the most important to the story?

You’d be forgiven if you thought her weapon hobby since that’s what the scene focuses on, but it’s actually her relationship with her dad. A dad we won’t see on screen doing anything until episode three, and won’t see him interact with said daughter until episode eight.

Cassandra's relationship with her parents is supposedly a driving force behind her decisions in season 3, which in turn drive the main conflict, but we so little see those relationships that they leave little impact once they become important. in fact the audience is mostly just left scratching their heads and guessing what went down between them. That’s not a good thing. Once again, motivation, goals, and inter personal conflicts should not be left to viewer interpretation. They need to be established. This line does not establish what audience needs to know.

Eugene Deserves Better

On that note, Eugene is set up pretty well, but he doesn’t get the focus he deserves.He’s constantly shoved aside for either Rapunzel’s or Cassandra’s conflicts/goals instead.

As the series goes on, this translates into him actually being subservient to Rapunzel herself while she goes around bullying, dismissing, and actively brow beating him until he complies to all of her wishes. And the line above is foreshadowing for that.

The writers don’t consider Eugene a main protagonist, even though they should, and think that all secondary characters must comply to anything and everything the protagonists desire. Which it not how you should write characters ever.

A good compelling protagonist won’t get everything they want and nor should they. Likewise just because a secondary character wants or needs something doesn’t mean their goals or desires should be ignored.

The result of this line of thinking is to present an obvious power imbalance in numerous relationships throughout the course of the show, which are unhealthy and uncomfortable to watch.

As for New Dream specifically, they go from being a cute couple who are learning from one another equally to a toxic relationship where one character is a doormat to the other. The fact that this is presented by the show as ‘positive character development’ and a healthy relationship that is to be emulated is one of the more repulsive elements to sit through. And looking back you can see the warning signs starting all the way back to here in the pilot.

Lady Caine is Wasted

Speaking of undeserved characters, meet Lady Caine. By all accounts she should be one of the main antagonist of the series.

She isn’t.

If Cass lacks set up, then Caine has too much. She’s given a complex backstory, sympathetic motivation, and a understandable goal from her first reveal. And none of it matters.

She only appears three times in the series and each time she is cast aside. Her original goals and motivations ignored upon subsequent appearances.

She is made to be the perfect foil for Rapunzel. Her opposite in every way. And is presented as someone important to the audience. Everything about her screams main villain and the show never delivers on its promise.

This is Abuse

Another thing the show fails to acknowledge is calling out abusive behavior, routinely.

In this episode alone, Rapunzel’s father

Dismisses Rapunzel’s autonomy as a grown adult.

Repeats Mother’s Gothel’s lines about the world being a ‘dark and cruel place’ nearly word for word back to Rapunzel in order to guilt her into staying, there by preforming the same abuse as her former abuser

Is constantly feared by everyone, even his own daughter. To the point that no one trusts him with the truth for fear of what he may do. This is passed off as humorous until you remember he has the power to hang people and has done so for non-violent crimes

Is hinted at being a totalitarian ruler who disproportionately enacts punishments upon poor people who need to steal to survive.

Is hinted to have orphaned a child once and may have done so to numerous other children

Abuses his authority as king to coerce his daughter into obeying him

And that’s only in the first episode. It gets worse guys. Much worse.

Oh Look! Foreshadowing that Means Nothing

You can’t tell but that’s suppose to be Quirin. This winds up mattering not in the slightest.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, Before Ever After is a false advertisement. A pilot is suppose to inform the audience of the premise of it’s show and give them expectations of what is to come from the series. Nothing that’s set up here comes to fruition and things that do wind up being important aren’t established properly. The only reason to watch is to find out how Rapnuzel got her long hair back and get the mystery of the rocks. As a singular episode it’s ok, as part of ongoing series it’s dismal. Which is the majority of this show in a nutshell.

#tangled #crtique #anti-tangled #tts #rapunzel's tangled adventure #before ever after #rta

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detectivejigsawpines · 4 years ago

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Relatively Relativity-part 5 (Ford gets forcefully decaffeinated and Dipper gets chest hair)

Seeing how freakishly big and hairy his arms were (at least compared to how they were just yesterday) told Dipper that no, it wasn’t a dream, he really was an old man now. Great.

Mabel was already out of bed, so Dipper started to sit up-and immediately tried not to groan as he realized that Stan’s comments about how much your joints ached first thing in the morning at this age had not been exaggerated.

Oh man...I hope my body’s not going to be this badly in shape when I get old for real. Is my back supposed to make that kind of noise?

“Ow, ow ow ow…” Dipper swung his legs around to the side, and went through the arduous process of standing up. Once he was actually on his feet, he felt more or less okay.

Until he nearly jumped out of his skin at the sounds of yelling from downstairs.

Dipper sprinted downstairs as fast as he could (again, not as fast as when he was thirteen), following the sounds of yelling towards the kitchen. A million horrifying scenarios flitted through his thoughts as an explanation.

Had a monster broken in and attacked? Was something on fire? Worse, was someone on fire?!

He skidded into the doorway-and saw Mabel standing with a hand pressed flat against one of the cupboards, keeping it shut, while Grunkle Ford appeared to be trying to climb her, and Grunkle Stan stood at the stove looking far too amused at the level of conflict that was taking place (then again, this was Stan we’re talking about).

“What in the heck is going on here?!” Dipper demanded.

Ford finally seemed to manifest how undignified his current behavior was; he immediately let go of Mabel and hopped away, attempting to smooth down his clothes. “Ah-good morning, Dipper. We-were just-having a small disagreement on proper morning sustenance-”

“Mabel wasn’t lettin’ him have coffee,” Stan translated.

“He’s too young for it!” Mabel retorted.

“Oh for-we are not actual children, Mabel! In case you’ve forgotten, I am more than forty years your senior!” Ford looked a little like he was about to stamp his foot.

“Not right now, you’re not!”

“I’m afraid I’m gonna have to side with Mabel on this,” Dipper reluctantly admitted. Immediately he found himself having to shrink away from his mini-grunkle’s withering glare. “Considering what you guys were like with the Mabel Juice yesterday, it’s probably not good for you to get high amounts of sugar or caffeine in your systems!”

Ford looked like he was about to snarl out something indignant-but then the truth of Dipper’s words sank in, and he slumped down in reluctant acknowledgment. Grumbling wordlessly, he stomped to the fridge and yanked out the carton of apple juice that was in the door.

Stan snickered-and then swore when he realized that the batch of scrambled eggs he was making had started burning due to his not paying attention.

“Language!” Ford scolded.

“Sorry. Guess I’ve spent too long away from kids.”

Mabel blinked. “Wait. Since we’re the grownups now, does that mean we can use those words?”

“No!” Stan hurriedly shuffled the eggs around until he’d gathered the blackened ones into his spatula, allowing him to shake them into the trash. “I don’t wanna haveta explain ta your mom why you came home with a bad case of sailor mouth!”

“We’re in junior high now, Grunkle Stan,” Dipper reminded him as he sat down, “We already hear all of them several times a day.” “No excuse.”

Dipper was tempted to try figuring out how to make coffee just to see what it tasted like (okay, and maybe to annoy Grunkle Ford a little). But he decided he wasn’t ready to try experimenting with the process yet, and so he just had juice along with eggs and cereal.

“Where’s Soos?” he asked as the rest of his family sat down.

“They got some early tourists, so he’s showing them around the exhibits while Melody runs the gift shop,” said Mabel. “And it’s shopping day, so Abuelita’s getting groceries.”

“Hope they weren’t freaked out by all the racket.”

****

Elsewhere in the Shack

Soos nearly jumped out of his skin at the sounds of yelling, which could be heard from all the way on this side of the house, but he rolled with it.

“Whoa, sounds like the Summerween ghosts have started up early this year.”

A small child at the front of the group raised her tiny hand. “What’s Summerween?”

Soos knelt and put a large hand on her tiny shoulder. “We have much to discuss.”

****

For a little bit everyone ate in relative silence; finally, though, Dipper cleared his throat. “Melody suggested we should try wearing some kind of protective gear in case the flowers act up again.”

“I made us all masks!” Mabel held up four strips of brightly colored cloth with elastic straps at the ends, and their names stitched onto them surrounded by rainbows and flowers and stuff.

“That probably depends on whether it was just ingestion of the pollen that changed us, or if they needed to make contact with us,” Ford mused, rubbing his chin. “We should probably prepare for both outcomes, just in case. I think I have what we need in the basement.”

He hopped off his chair-and paused to give himself a slightly annoyed/confused glare at having done so, before shaking his head and making his way out of the kitchen.

When he returned, it was with a large, clunky-looking watch thing strapped to his wrist.

“This generates a small force field system that can completely envelope the flower and prevent the pollen from spreading; it also makes things levitate.”

“Whoa.” Stan’s eyes grew ridiculously big and shiny. “Can I use it?”

Ford narrowed his eyes at his brother. “Are you planning to try and pick pockets with it?”

“...No…”

“Uh-huh. I think I’ll hold onto it for now.”

“Hmph. Whatever.”

****

The mini-grunkles were still in their clothes from yesterday, which were kind of filthy, so at Mabel’s insistence they changed into some of Dipper’s spare things.

Stan held up a blue-and-white striped T-shirt, tilting his head quizzically. “If you got all these clothes, why the heck do you wear the same outfit every day?”

“And when do you take time to wash it?” Ford asked, wrinkling his nose.

Dipper flushed. “Don’t you guys start!”

“HA! See, I’m not the only one who thinks your hygiene practices are gross!” Mabel crowed triumphantly.

Dipper shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked out of the attic.

****

Eventually everyone took the time to get dressed before their new expedition.

Mabel had made herself a brand new sweater (purple, with “HOT GRANDMA” written on it in sparkly bright blue letters), and borrowed one of Abuelita’s old dresses to wear under it. Dipper, meanwhile, had pointedly put his clothes in the wash, and borrowed a pair of Stan’s khaki shorts and a red Hawaiian shirt.

Well, at least I finally have chest hair, he thought as he buttoned up the shirt, examining his torso in the mirror. At least there was one thing to enjoy about old age.

Unfortunately, it was accompanied by a large quantity of stomach hair...and arm hair...and ear hair...basically a lot more hair than he’d been expecting.

He was only stopped from seeing if shaving some of it off would be more effective than it had been for Stan by the realization that his family was probably waiting for him.

“Took ya long enough,” Stan scolded when he returned to the kitchen. “C’mon, let’s go already!”

They headed out the door-and immediately ran into Wendy, who had at last showed up for work.

****

Aw, crap.

Dipper realized he had forgotten to text her about what had happened.

“Uh-hey, Wendy. Believe it or not, it’s us.”

She did a long, slow blink. Then, raising one eyebrow, she asked, “...Do I want to know?”

“We had an accident with a magic flower,” Mabel explained. “So now we gotta get another one to figure out how to change us back to normal.”

“Ya wanna come?” Stan asked.

Wendy smiled at him. “That’d be awesome, Mr. Pines, but I got work.”

Stan’s face contorted into an expression of shock. “Wait, what? You’re passing up a chance ta slack off work?!” He reached up a tiny hand to feel Wendy’s forehead. “Are you feeling okay?!”

She snorted and shoved him off. “Soos pays me extra if I stay through a whole shift. And I’m trying to save up for a car, so I need all the help I can get.”

“...So the secret to keeping you from slacking off was to pay you more?” Stan pondered this for a bit...and then shook his head. “Nah, it’s not worth it.”

Wendy laughed and punched his shoulder. “Later, dorks.” She started to walk past, before spinning around on one heel. “Oh, Dipper-loving the new hair. Gives you a kinda silver fox look.”

...Despite himself, Dipper couldn’t help blushing and grinning as he ran a hand through his hair. And then he sighed as he ignored a smirking Mabel and headed to the car, ready to share joint custody of the driver’s seat with Stan again.

The fact that Wendy only ever saw him as attractive when he was way older than her was probably a sign that he’d made the right choice in stopping pining over her.

Heh heh...pining.

Because he was a Pines.

...Oh crap, now he was starting to think dad jokes were funny.

We gotta get changed back soon.

********

...Sorry, Wendip fans, but I just don't see it happening.

It's not even the age difference, so much as that personality-wise, she strikes me as just staying a "cool big sis" figure to both him and Mabel.

(Also I'm kind of biased towards Dipcif-)

Nothing, you didn't see that.

Moving on.

#gravity falls #grunkle stan #grunkle ford #age swap #relatively relativity #ford wants coffee #getting ready to go #not wendip #sorry

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harveywritings92 · 5 years ago

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Modern AU:40yr old! Jacob x Accidental Wife! Reader PT. 1

Jacob is the founder and CEO to Rook security Inc. He finds out his fiancee has cheated on him and ran off with the guy, while Y/n's just been ditched at the alter by her fiancee who ran off with her best friend. She ends up at the same bar wallowing in their sorrow, they noticed each other sitting alone and started talking and drinking lots and lots of drinking till they blackout! the next morning the two wake up in a hotel room still clothed thankfully but married?! apparently in their drunken stupor they somehow found their way to a five minute wedding chapel, and thought what the hell? she's already in a dress and got rings! let's go for it! instead of annulling the marriage the two decided to give it a chance and get to know each other.

Also note: Jacob is about 38 at the beginning of the story and reader is 26. so like a 12 year age difference between them.

--------------------------------

24 hrs After being ditched by their receptive partners

Y/n had already moved in with Jacob mainly because the day after their... unorthodox union, Jacob went to drop her off at her home only to find, her ex-fiancee had Ex-BF move in and changed the locks and thrown her stuff on the curb, the y/hc woman didn't know what to do! she knows her parents were out of the question, they'd just mock and belittle Y/n for being a failure and not "perfect" like her older siblings...and her siblings were also out! they had their kids and wouldn't be able to put her up for couple weeks until she found an apartment!..

So, Y/n was lost! maybe her boss can let her sleep in the office? Next thing she knew Jacob was picking through her stuff, Asking her what was hers and what was a gift from her ex and former friend and tossing them, he helped load them on to his truck, and telling her to get in after a silent car ride.

He brought her to a very expensive apartment complex brought her to his apartment he showed her around the place of course she was still in daze about everything she was hardly listening, He showed her where her room was his ex's yoga studio...of course she was using it for more then just yoga, as he found out! He told her they can go find her a bed and furniture tomorrow, so for now just use his room or sleep on the couch he's not using either right now...

"Now if you'll excuse me dear, I've got to go make a few calls." and with that her new husband was already gone before she could even ask him important shit...like if she wants to go out, how's she supposed to get back in?! instead she just opted to get change out of this damn dress! luckily the little clasp at the back broke and Y/n managed to unzip it half-way wiggled out of it.

She checked through her things, luckily they didn't do anything to her clothes... the sound of the door opening caused Y/n to freeze as Jacob's voice filled her ears.

"Oh, I forgot the code for the...door..." His words died off when he saw Y/n in nothing but black panties the two awkwardly stared at each other before the y/hc woman hugged a t-shirt to her chest and snapped at him to get out! the British man's face turned red and he stuttered out an apology before slamming the door. a few seconds later as Y/n was pulling pajama pants on she saw a piece of paper slide under the door she picked it up.

[front door guest code:8464, Apt. door guest code: 10634, temporary until you get a key. -J.F.] Y/n bit her lip and cautiously peeked outside to see if it was safe? and sighed Mr. Frye was gone, barely two minutes in and he's already seen her naked... How embarrassing. the y/wt woman surveyed the apartment and was appalled at the mess laying around! clothes, rancid take-out, dirty dishes, shopping bags! just left laying on the floor collecting god knows what for how long?!

Y/n got to work looking around the apartment for cleaning supplies, She was stunned find them brand new and never opened, "Jesus.." she said in disbelief then looked up a photo of Jacob with a model looking bottle blond, smiling like she'd won the lottery. "tsk, ever heard of a mop, or cleaning service..." She hissed at the woman's face while resisting the urge to print out the 'Damn bitch u live like this? ' meme, and tape it to Jacob's door of course he was an older guy... so, there's a possibility that he wouldn't know what it meant and would take it as an insult...Then a thought occurred to the y/nat as she stopped sweeping her head slowly turned towards Jacob's bedroom with morbid curiosity she thought *...if this is what his living room is like, then what does the bedroom?*

She leaned the broom against the kitchen isle and nervously made her way to Mr. Frye's door she swallowed and opened the door and peeked inside the color drained from her face as she slammed it shut. "Good lord! It's like The Day After in there!" she wheezed in horror not understanding how the hell Jacob could sleep in that filth, let alone his ex! she had to have said something about it!

Unless... She was the one who made the apartment like this? that honestly wouldn't surprise the y/wt woman her grandmother used to say 'Sometimes pretty faces hide messy habits.' guess she really hit on the nail on that one... Now that Y/n had some time to herself she recalled how filthy [ExBF]'s apartment always was, it got to the point were her landlord threatened eviction if she didn't clean it!

Y/n sighed recalling the fit [ExBF] threw while calling asking her to help her...By Help she meant ""Y/n do it for me while I sit on my ass a text my four boyfriends all fricken day and not say thank you!"" The y/ht blew some hair out of her face as she finished packing garbage bags. "Why the hell was I ever friends with that bitch?" She pondered out loud then thought back to when they were kids.

[ExBF] always got what she wanted! if she got new dress she'd show off and brag, if someone got a dress nicer then hers? she'd throw a tantrum and call that person out for ""stealing her spotlight!"", one of their other friends liked a boy? Nope, not anymore he was [ExBF]'s now, Oh, wait he's not rich or spineless? better drop his ass... It made Y/n feel sick at how she used to make excuses for that girl's behavior!

She also should've seen the way [ExBF]'s face soured when she announced her marriage and introduced her ex-Fiancee to her. Y/n should have seen it coming, but she was so infatuated with [Ex/n] that she was blind to the signs that he was a just a scummy as ExBF, Y/n wanted to lived in a small apartment and save up Y'know? Nope he demanded a house!

Then he get's laid off at work and says he's looking for a job, meanwhile Y/n is working three jobs to pay the bills and all she ask is for him take out the trash or maybe order some dinner for when she gets home? Nope, he sits on his ass playing video-games all day, then whines to her that the house stinks and he's hungry! She noticed ExBF had been coming around a lot during that time but Y/n just figured her friend was looking for her or something.

Y/n stomach churned in vexation she hoped they were both miserable together, they deserve each other... she snorted as she straightened out some mail that was tossed under an end table, onto the counter in a neat stack, then check around for a trash chute a fancy place has to have a trash chute, She saw the instruction on the back of the apartment door...

The end off the hall, She grabbed the bags and was about to leave when she remember the door codes and found them sitting on the floor in her room she tucked it in the waist band of her pj's and took the trash out she found the chutes tossed the bags in and headed back to Jacobs apartment and was about to punch the code when she heard someone clear their throat behind her.

Y/n looked over her shoulder to see a security guard standing behind her. "Urm... Yes?" the y/ht woman squeaked unsure if she was in trouble. "Ma'am would you come with me a moment?" she winced Yes... she was definitely in trouble! and there she was sitting in security office.

"Look I already told you, he let me in I didn't steal anything, I was just cleaning!?" Y/n huffed as the guard rolled his eyes at her obviously not believing her. Before repeating what was really in those bags what had she stolen from Mr. Frye? causing Y/n to growl in frustration "I don't don't know how much will moldy take-out and empty beer cans fetch me?" she snarked this upset the guard who threatened to call the cops, but a British voice cut him off.

"That won't be necessary..." The guard jumped from his seat to see Jacob Frye standing there none to pleased to see his new roommate in handcuffs. "Oh, Mr. Frye! Sir we got a call of a disturbance, I caught her breaking in." the guard said sounding almost proud of himself as the hazel eyed man glared at him. "She's not a thief, she's my wife." Jacob stated the guard looked at him bemused. "W-what? but-" it was obvious he'd seen Jacob's ex before and Y/n looked nothing like her.

"But nothing, uncuff her now..." the guard swallowed nervous the intimidating man's tone and complied Y/n sighed flexing her arms trying to get some feeling back in them as she got up and joined, Jacob who scrutinized her arms and frowned seeing the red marks on her wrists, he shot the guard a sharp look before escorting Y/n to the elevator. "What were you doing out of my apartment this late?" the British man ask keeping his eyes on the elevator doors.

"Erm, taking out the trash?" the y/nat woman squeaked unsure if he was going to be mad that she cleaned his home without permission, Jacob cocked a brow at her inquisitively as the y/ht rambled that she didn't really have much to do, so she figured why not? as they approached his door Jacob's hazel eyes widen to see how nice a neat apartment was, he could see the floors again...

He’d forgotten they were a dark cherry hardwood the green Persian rug his brother in law had sent him was also was also vacuumed, he looked on the counter and saw stack of mail and carefully sift through it, all credit-card bills and invoices, all passed due! he let out an annoyed sighed as Y/n shifted unnerved and awkwardly spoke up.

"I wasn't sure if I should toss those, sorry."

"No, it's fine..these pretty much tell me what Karin was up to while I was working..."

"Um, if you want I could...the photos."

"Get rid of them? Go right ahead, It seems fair I did same for you."

"Right..." Y/n said getting to it while Jacob looked through every letter before finding something that interested him, he disappeared in his room for the next hour as Y/n finished cleaning the rest of his apartment, she heard Jacob's barely audible voice coming from behind the door.

Most likely on his phone if Y/n had to guess 'Karin' may have opened a secret nest egg account using Mr. Frye's name he must've just found it, That's probably what he's been doing all day calling banks and credit card companies to cancel cards and accounts she may have opened in his name without his knowledge...

Y/n pause as she picked up laundry and and scrutinized the labels; Fuck these things cost more then her house's rent! She almost felt like fainting as she tossed it in a hamper, and thought about what was going on with her surprise husband's situation. If her brief stint in law school was worth its salt, Then Jacob's ex could face some federal charges and prison time for that! It's basically ID fraud and embezzling.

She saw the light go off in his room he must gone to sleep? or just wanted to be alone with his thoughts lips formed a thin line as she looked over a the grand father clock at the other end of the living room, Was it seriously 3 A.M.?! the y/nat was surprised so much time had passed she felt like she just got here!

After some thought she decided it was time for her to turn in as well, She'll just have to figure out what to do with herself in the morning...

She found her sleeping bag in one of the trash bags and laid it out on the couch and settled down for bed, strange when Y/n was closing her eyes she thought she saw a hooded figure disappear behind the clock...

[the Building Jacob lives in was built by the Assassins so there are a lot of secret exits and entrances scattered all around the premises.]

#assassin's creed x reader #assassin's creed syndicate #40yr old! Jacob Frye #jacob frye x reader #watch_Dogs #CrossOver #Hacker! Reader

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incarnation-of-victory · 5 years ago

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Bakugou’s Fear of Mediocrity and Human Weakness

It’s interesting to see Bakugou’s inner thought process here as he prepares to fight this villain (from the 1st chapter of the spin-off tie-in manga to the Heroes: Rising movie, “Deku & Bakugo: Rising”), especially knowing what we know now about Bakugou and his fears about him not actually being as great as he thinks he is.

For one, the line about “[m]ost of the top heroes show[ing] signs of greatness even as students” echoes the line Bakugou says in the very first chapter of the manga proper:

Both monologues get across similar messages, but I think the one from the spin-off is a little more revealing/blatant, especially with the line “I’m not just a normal middle schooler. I’ll show them I’m different and rise to the top.” This line from the spin-off suggests that Bakugou doesn’t quite think he’s unique from the rest of his peers yet, and that he’s desperate to use this chance to finally prove himself to everybody. Meanwhile, the line from the manga makes him seem more confident in himself, that he’s sure that he’ll be the only one to succeed, while simultaneously disparaging the rest of his classmates. Of course, his words contradict his actions here: Bakugou isn’t as confident in this outcome as he seems, since he goes out of his way to discourage Deku from applying to U.A. because he actually feels threatened by him. Bakugou being the only one to get into U.A. would be a way of him validating his belief (read: hope) that he’s the best after all. Additionally, Bakugou goes on about being the first and only hero/U.A. student originating from Aldera, which, in theory, would be an easy accomplishment, since the middle school is supposedly devoid of any promising hero applicants. This achievement of him being the only one to succeed would also make him seem all the more impressive and exceptional—a unique case, so to speak. His goal should be guaranteed... if it wasn’t for Deku.

So both scenes carry the same idea, but Bakugou is a little more honest to himself in his head (makes sense, naturally). There’s this kind of sad, desperate urgency I get from the spin-off that I don’t get from the manga. It’s just a weird train of thought to have when hunting down a villain, that he’s using this opportunity to prove to everyone (and himself) he’s the great prodigy they made him out to be his whole life. Even though he still needs to reassure himself that he’s not ordinary and is actually “different.”

This whole idea of Bakugou wanting to rise above everyone else stems from this fear of mediocrity. It calls to mind how the literal translation of “Quirk” from Japanese means “Individuality” (the word “quirk” itself also implies some unique trait). This means that your Quirk is essentially what makes you, you. It's what makes you stand out among everyone else. Because Bakugou does place a lot of faith in his Quirk getting him to the top, distinguishing him as someone special.

The interesting thing is that Bakugou initially wasn’t really aware that he was just more naturally adept—sans Quirk—than other kids his age growing up. The way he comes off in his childhood flashbacks in the manga make him seem more naive, not really understanding why everyone else just can’t as easily grasp the skills he masters so easily:

(I would argue that even current Bakugou doesn’t notice his other good qualities/talents as much, which is probably why it’s so easy for him to twist them into something bad or forget them entirely, and instead fixate solely on his Quirk. This is especially important when it comes to Heroism as a career, and his need to take more things than just raw power into consideration).

The theory that he’s just “better than everyone else” doesn’t fully cement until he gets his Quirk. With this, Bakugou seems to think of himself as someone almost godly or invincible, as someone almost more than just... human. Which is why I think he’s so averse to any suggestion that he has any weaknesses—it’s a reminder that he’s indeed human after all. He’s mortal and fallible and need help sometimes. And being human brings him back down to the level of everyone else, but perhaps even further beneath them, which is exemplified in the infamous creek scene where Deku tries to help Bakugou. And again when Deku tries to save him from the sludge villain. And repeated other instances throughout their lives. Because if Deku, someone who doesn’t even have a Quirk or anything that makes him special, is somehow is able to do something for him, then what does that make Bakugou? If Quirkless Deku is somehow better than Quirk-holder Bakugou, then Bakugou’s power—which is something he built his self-esteem around—essentially means nothing in comparison. Bakugou ends up being just like everyone else, but worse: someone so weak that they need help from a “worthless Deku.”

Another important thing to note is that part of why Bakugou neglects to think of himself as human is because most people never really treated him as such. For one, everybody almost exclusively praised him for his superficial or material strengths that it gave him the idea that he was perfect and had no flaws. In turn, he carries himself this way around others, thus perpetuating how everybody else sees him: as someone who never needs help. I could write a whole other essay on its own of how many times people in the BNHA universe assume that Bakugou doesn’t need help, or that he’s stronger than he actually is. The time the heroes left him to fend off the sludge villain is but one example. Even when Bakugou fell off that log as a child, his other friends disregarded the possibility that he might be hurt, because he’s “strong.” In terms of emotional need, nobody, not even his parents, suspected that Bakugou was still suffering emotionally from the Kamino incident, and that he wasn’t handling it as well as everyone thought he was (Talk about a poker face! For someone so outwardly expressive, it’s stunning to see how well he hides his suffering. The greatest hint we get is him being unusually quiet). All Might even points out his failure to recognize this. As much as Bakugou is responsible for his own actions, others have failed him repeatedly too.

I know I said that “people failing to recognize when Bakugou needs help” could be another post on its own, but I want to point out one scene (or rather two) in particular that showcase how much Bakugou really does need emotional and physical help sometimes.

For one, when All Might and the rescue operation break into the LoV’s hideout to retrieve Bakugou, All Might’s first priority is to verbally comfort/reassure him, as per Nana Shimura’s adage to not only save a person’s life, but their heart/spirit as well. He gives the whole “We are here” line and tells Bakugou he’s okay...

Though he outwardly denies it, the truth of the matter is, Bakugou really was in trouble and needed their help, and he truly was scared. This is clear enough by his initial reaction, which he quickly covers up with a defensive response immediately afterwards. I can’t say for sure whether All Might’s words made him feel much better, but I assume it must have given him at least a little peace of mind.

A similar thing happens when Deku and company pull Bakugou out of the following fight. Again, Bakugou is initially grateful to the team because he really did need their assistance to escape the battle grounds. Though he goes back to grumbling and arguing with Iida immediately after, and denies their part in saving him after they’ve fully escaped, his grateful/relieved, perhaps lightly disapproving smile when grabbing Kirishima’s hand reveals his true feelings.

On a somewhat different note, when Bakugou is having issues, people address them in a poor and/or dehumanizing manner: see the way he was chained and muzzled at the end of the Sports Festival. And not to get too much into the Mitsuki discourse, but the way she tries to curb her son’s behavior does not seem to help either.

Because Bakugou is so ingrained in this mentality that he’s supposed to be invulnerable, he isn’t able to interpret basic human concern properly when it’s shown to him, notably when it’s one of the few people who ever treated him like a human being: Deku. Not only that, but Deku knew Bakugou before he got his Quirk, and admired him for his other traits as well, such as his confidence and determination. But Deku never blindly idolized his friend either: he notes several times (to other people) Bakugou’s bad qualities too. The distinction here is that Deku never paints Bakugou as a lesser or bad person for it. Instead, he accepts who Bakugou is as a whole, while still acknowledging him as someone worth looking up to.

An investment in being the best is fine and all on its own, but not when it starts to infest other aspects of your life, especially socially. Bakugou’s antisocial tendencies are probably mostly due to him just deeming activities that don’t allow him to prove himself as a waste of time, but I also feel that some of it is due to his fear of appearing as a normal human being—as someone who sometimes just wants to spend time with his friends purely for the sake of enjoying their company. As someone who needs other people. I think this also kind of applies to his inability to be emotionally vulnerable around others, as well as to accept acts of kindness and affection. It’s what makes him human. This is why Bakugou only comes to Deku when he needs to open up—because Deku is one of the few people who knows him for everything he is, who recognizes him as a flawed individual. And again, Deku never looks down on him for anything (despite Bakugou’s former belief). Not even when Bakugou cries.

All this really comes down to is Bakugou accepting other people’s help and relying more on collaboration than just taking on enemies solo. I think having him participate in other, non-combative activities, such as playing in a band in the School Festival Arc, is a good way to ease him into this methodology. Also, since it seems to be a trend at this point, it’d be nice to see him be hugged at least once without making a face. Though I do think it’s at least good that people are being more attentive to his emotional needs, whether it be in praising him (when it’s warranted), or comforting him (even if he thinks he doesn’t need it). Like yeah, I highly doubt Bakugou will ever be much of a touchy-feely person. But at the very least, he needs to know that other people care about him as a human being, and that this concern doesn’t make him any less of a talented, powerful individual.

#this literally just started with one panel from the spin-off and spiralled into something else #apologies if this is all over the place #bnha meta #i guess?#bakugou katsuki

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