#might die and/or go fully blind before u get to see them (also for the first time in 8 years) this summer'

[wethecelestial]

they should invent a grief thats uncomplicated and purely cathartic to experience. has anyone thought of this before

[crusherthedoctor]

The beach trope: another one that often comes early in Sonic's quests, and this one's no different, though expectations are very mildly subverted by making it the third zone instead of the very first. (Careful Crusher, you had the audience on the edge of their seats there.)

More importantly though, it's possibly one of the most famous and celebrated level tropes in the series. Emerald Coast is undeniably iconic, Seaside Hill is just as iconic while also merging with the Green Hill setup, and Wave Ocean... is a poor man's Emerald Coast, but it's probably better than most levels in '06 by comparison, so it too is iconic, from a certain point of view. We can't forget Jungle Joyride either, even if that's mostly because we got to see the frame rate die before our very eyes.

So how do you make your interpretation stand out? How do you prevent having a Wave Ocean 2: Wave Oceaner on your hands? Well, it's actually very simple...

Creating Zone 3: Coastline Resort

3-1: Shining Shore

Remember when I said that sometimes all it takes to make an environment feel different is the time of day, or a change in weather? This is one of the first major examples of putting that philosophy into action, as compared to previous beach levels, which were usually content with taking place in the bright sunny daytime, this one takes place under a pleasant purple sunset.

This of course contrasting heavily with not only the blue sea, but also the sands, which although given a mild touch of purple courtesy of the sunset, cannot fully hide their natural shade of white.

And of course, waterfalls.

We can’t forget the waterfalls.

Despite being a true blue beach level first and foremost, there are also a few hints of plaza, further setting it apart from the Emerald Coasts and Not-Emerald Coasts of old times past. This aesthetic in particular is based heavily on the seaside town of Whitby.

No doubt Sonic would admire this place, at least when he's not forced to go deep underwater. Maybe when the adventure is over, he can come back here and have a relaxing moment with... someone. Dunno who though. I doubt Eggman would be interested, and not just because he's actually in-character. Oh well, plenty more horses in the sea.

Speaking of, what about the underwater sections? Shining Shore does have them after all, in full 3D, as opposed to making them bottomless pits in disguise. Unsurprisingly, everything's a lot more blue than purple down there, gorgeously so, but the coral reef provides its own variety of colour.

The local fishies don't seem to mind you being in their line of sight... nor do the Badniks, but probably for a different reason.

Since we're three zones in, you might have noticed by now that each zone, regardless of their overall colour scheme, has one element in at least one act that goes all rainbow with the colours than everything else. You had the flower patches in Gleaming Meadows, you had the wood barriers in Tricky Tropics with their rusting paint jobs, and now we have the coral reef in Coastline Resort... any reason for this?

Alas, the answer is a mundane one: it's just a little way of tying all the zones in Viridonia together. As this quest revolves around the mystery of the elusive Ethereal Zone, this seemingly inconsequential aspect is a way of ensuring that it will always remain at the back of your mind. It may be relatively more subtle and easy to miss than, say, a giant moon glaring down angrily at you no matter where you go on the map as it literally comes closer and closer to killing everyone, but the intention is effectively the same: the central meat of the setting and story is always present in some form, however indirect, even if the characters aren't currently discussing it.

Also, shout out to the lighthouse that helped our heroes by inadvertently blinding the pursuing mechanized orca.

You really put a dent in Heavy Gunner's strategy.

First Section (calm): Lagoony Tunes (Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced) Peach Field (Mario Hoops 3-on-3)

Second Section (adrenaline): Lost Palace (Team Sonic Racing) Hang Eight (Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back)

3-2: Crazy Rapids

Being a whimsical water park, made even more whimsical to fit the video game format, this one explains itself in a lot of areas. But let's go over the finer details anyway, shall we?

As mentioned in the fic, the park has been made to fit in seamlessly with the ruins present in the area, thus creating a Good Future-esque wonderland of nature and technology in harmony. For an idea of how the ruins aesthetic would work, imagine something akin to the Sunset Beach Resort in Jamaica, particularly the long bridge and archways you can see in both of these shots:

Kind of has an Aquatic Ruin vibe, doesn’t it?

Even then, that only applies to half of the architecture, as the other half breaks up the yellow with some white, reminiscent of a certain OTHER watery location in Sonic's past...

We also have the giant fountains sprinkled around the place. There are two types of fountains to be exact, both of which may seem familiar to the attentive eye...

The difference? They're larger. MUCH larger. As in, you can actually platform your way on and around them.

As for what’s inside? It's exactly how you'd imagine it to be, albeit exaggerated even further to befit a Sonic level.

And in-tune with the beachside mood, the Chao Garden found nearby would take a page from the one in Station Square...

...with a little extra flavor of this...

...complete with miniature water slides and the like for the adorable inhabitants... the inhabitants that Eggman currently has an unexplained interest in. How do the Chao factor into his latest plan?

Heh heh, only I and those I've discussed it with in PMs know that for now.

First Section (outside): Windy and Ripply (Sonic Adventure) Ocean Palace (Sonic Heroes)

Second Section (inside): Data Select (Tee Lopes) Wii Shop Channel - Mii Channel (Super Smash Bros. Wii U)

3-3: Aquarium Gallery

Disappointed that Crazy Rapids lacked that smooth red-on-blue contrast that Aquarium Park from Sonic Colours had? Well we can’t all be in the same league as Eggman sadly, but fear not, for the similarly named Aquarium Gallery gets right in on the action, combining red walls and an overall upper class aesthetic...

...with the expected quantities of shimmering blue that comes with the aquarium setting. And with glass tanks of great size, comes great fishies to go along with them.

The black and white checkered floor would also be a must. It's a Sonic game, we gotta have a checkered pattern somewhere. It just works. /ToddCrusher

Don't worry about the living conditions for the fish here, by the way. Eggman mechanizing them aside, the people who work at the park - and those who visit it - make sure to treat all the marine life with the utmost respect and kindness. Just a shame that they're apparently not so willing to lend that same understanding to Trudy... but it does provide an early hint that despite the few genuine bad apples who are outright antagonistic towards Trudy, most of the folks ignorant to her condition are exactly that at worst: ignorant. Meaning, despite first impressions, most of them are not bad people at heart, and with a little help and persistence, it's not entirely impossible that they can eventually learn to understand and sympathise with Trudy's situation.

In other words, they have more dimension than the background characters in Sonic Boom, where they're all mostly a bunch of one-note arseholes with little redeeming qualities and don’t deserve to be saved by Sonic in the slightest.

Anyhow, eventually, after a trip through one of those sweet underwater tunnels...

...we find ourselves in the cavern area, where red is exchanged for turquoise, and there are reflected ripples galore. Since the Marble Caves in Chile already look halfway to being a Sonic level due to its unique formations, that's the best comparison I can make here.

Too blue, you might say? Well, the sunset from earlier would be poking through the holes in the wall, adding some warm to the cool once more... the giant seashells everywhere help spice it up too.

Like these, but bigger than Ken Penders’ ego.

If that’s even possible...

First Section (aquarium): Rooftop Run - Night (Sonic Unleashed) Coconut Mall (Mario Kart Wii)

Second Section (caves): Sea Shell Shenanigans (Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex) Dire, Dire Docks (Super Mario 64)

3-4: Hydro Plant

The outside structure for this place is shaped like a giant wall, which predictably brings the Hoover Dam to mind:

And that applies inside as well, at least initially. The similarities indoors come mostly from the generators, as well as the sheer size of the place.

Since it's considerably rustier however, we have darker lighting in place, with the sunset outside preventing it from being too dark inside. There’s also a copious amount of daring graffiti caused by hoodlums... or maybe Eggman, since he'd probably be the type to do that to any property that isn't his. Some of this graffiti would look very impressive...

While others would... uh...

Look, they tried, okay?

With all this graffiti, that means there’s opportunity for a generous helping of cheeky references to previous installments if you’re able to find them... and if you can understand them. To this day, the typo in “make belif reborn” has not been corrected. Absolutely disgusting.

But as the fic dictates, the further you go on, the tidier and more high tech it becomes. Simply put, this section would remind one of Aquatic Base from '06, mainly because I've always liked the idea despite its characteristically terrible level design, so why not salvage the concept and give it a second chance?

With some added flavor to make it less monotone, mind you. Like actual water sections, some green lights to break up all the blue, giant crab robot threatening to kill you... the works.

Sonic may be glad that this zone is behind him, but little does he know, it's not the only zone with intense water action around these parts. Luckily for him, that won't be for a while, so he can breathe a sigh of relief for now. Still, we know Eggman has other ways of keeping the gang on their toes...

First Section (rusty): Wily Stage 2 (Mega Man 7) Pokey Pipes (Donkey Kong Country 3)

Second Section (high tech): Ocean Base Act 1 (Sonic Advance 3) H2 Oh No (Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex)

[charlienick]

hi and i love u. "i swallow your heart and it crawls right out of my mouth" for the prompts....

Richie has decided that his dream-self can get fucked. And not in the fun way.

When he’s 24, at least once per night, Richie has what he would describe as an erotic nightmare. He never actually has sex in these dreams, nor does he die or even get seriously maimed. But they’re still definitely erotic, and they’re definitely nightmares. 

The first went something like this:

He is tied to a chair. He can’t get up. The rope is chafing his skin. He struggles against the darkness, but he does not move. He can’t. Squinting out into the inky black, he wonders if he’s wearing his glasses. It’s only once he has that thought that he sees a spotlight lighting up his childhood kitchen. His refrigerator has magnets from Acadia National Park, a photo of him and Bill flipping off the camera and laughing, a copy of his sonogram. The sight of it makes him ache in a way he can’t describe, nor does he have time to, because stepping out of the hallway and into the light is his childhood best friend, Eddie Kaspbrak.

Eddie is wearing a cream-colored sweater that he wore a lot in his late-teens and the bright red shorts he was so fond of in middle school. It’s a jarring combination, because Richie never saw him wear those two articles of clothing at the same time, let alone in the same era. He’s picking at a thread spinning loose from the sweater, looking down at it. He bites his bottom lip, and Richie starts to feel nervous, uncomfortable, because whenever he finds himself wishing Eddie were a woman so that it would feel normal for him to want to take his lip between his own, he looks away. Makes a joke. Averts attention from the ache in his heart, in his head, in his jeans.

He can’t do that now. He tries, but he doesn’t succeed. There’s something invisible keeping his head pointed forward. Eddie snaps his eyes up, smirks with the lip still caught in his teeth, and says… something. Richie can’t hear him from so far away, his hearing fuzzy the way his vision always is. The smirk isn’t cruel, isn’t mean or even teasing. Eddie looks proud of himself. He shucks off his sweater in one fluid movement and drops it to the linoleum beneath him. His skin shines golden, and Richie can hardly breathe. He feels like he’s being asphyxiated, and he bucks his hips, turned on and terrified.

And then he wakes up.

Dreams like this have happened almost nightly for months now. Once, it’s Eddie giving him a lap dance while he’s tied to the couch in their apartment. Another time, Bev catches Eddie stripping for him in his bedroom, and her laughter echoes all the way into the waking world. Regardless of the content of his dreams, Richie always remembers them in painstaking detail, and it’s really causing a rift between he and Eddie.

This sucks major donkey dick for three reasons: the first is that Richie is, like, deeply uncomfortable in his own home at all times. He can’t look at Eddie with his feet propped up on the ottoman without remembering how his legs looked wrapped around Richie’s waist, can’t hear his voice without remembering how he sounded moaning Richie’s name. The second reason, of course, is that Eddie is his best friend, and it’s shitty that Richie can’t find comfort in that the way he used to.

The third reason is that Eddie is starting to fucking notice.

He cornered Richie in the kitchen while he was making himself breakfast two mornings ago, and demanded he tell him what he did wrong because he couldn’t stand another weird, uncomfortable second of this weird standstill he and Richie had found themselves in. “What weird, uncomfortable standstill?” Richie had basically responded with, chuckling manically like that wouldn’t be a total tip-off that things were in fact weird and uncomfortable.

He has stopped walking around in his boxers, terrified that he’s going to get a hard-on when Eddie, like, waters the fucking spider plant and his shirt rides up and Richie short-circuits and has a total meltdown.

So he figures he’s attracted to his best friend. So what, he says to himself alone in his bedroom after jacking off the moment he woke up for the fifth day in a row. So I’m attracted to Eddie. Eddie is a pretty boy. This means nothing. I’m still straight.

He considers bringing this up to Stan, because next to Eddie, Stan is his best friend, but Stan would definitely laugh at him and say something like you’re an idiot. Go kiss your roommate and leave me be, which, okay, true, but not necessary. He knows, Brain-Stan! He’s aware the situation is reaching its boiling point! But he can’t exactly fucking tell Eddie, hey, I wanna suck your dick, but no homo, O best friend of mine! Eddie wouldn’t understand that the situation is precariously balanced between Richie’s suppression and the knowledge that Eddie has definitely sucked dick before.

Because Eddie was able to come out after he and the Losers moved from Maine to San Francisco, he has caught some dick regularly for the past six years. He’s pretty, as Richie’s head, heart, and apparently now dick all agree upon, and the four or so men he has in rotation all seem to think so, too. When Eddie would bring home a suitor prior to Richie’s epic sexual breakdown, he would just scamper over to Bev and Ben’s, or go bother Stan, Mike, and Bill at theirs. Now however, because on top of being attracted to his best friend, he’s also a goddamn masochist, and he’s staying holed up in his room listening to Eddie get fucked (or fuck? He isn’t certain on the makeup of his screwings, though not for lack of trying), one hand stripping his dick, feeling like a total and complete asshole. 

Richie knows that one’s sexuality is not always privy to one’s knowledge of whether or not the person would be interested in bedding him or not, and his wild imagination is not totally hinged upon reality. Bev and Ben would definitely not tie him up and have their way with him, but that’s still a familiar fantasy in his spank bank; he knows it will never happen, but it’s called a fantasy for a reason. However, jacking off to the sound of actual-Eddie’s moans and sighs is definitely crossing a line, and he knows it.

So since that one fated, sordid evening, he has decided that he isn’t going to jack off at all until either the dreams stop or he’s able to talk this out with Eddie in a normal way without totally having a mental breakdown.

This was a stupid decision, he decides ten days in, because it seems like the dreams aren’t going to stop and he’s going to have to face this for real or his subconscious might actually eat him alive. He’s not going to give into his libido because his heart is stronger than that. His weak willpower will not be his downfall.

So he decides to talk to Ben, because he’s the least likely to make fun of him about this, and because he might be able to knock some sense into him.

“Wait, you and Eddie aren’t making love already?” Ben’s face screws up in confusion. “Oh.”

“What do you mean, oh? We haven’t ever knocked boots because I’m straight as an arrow.”

“Sorry to inform you, Rich, but having… ‘erotic nightmares’ about your male best friend isn’t exactly heterosexual behavior.” Richie goes to cut in, but Ben holds a hand up. “And what would be so wrong with liking boys? Or liking Eddie?” Richie snaps his mouth shut. “Eddie is the best. You love Eddie as a friend, right?”

“Totally, yeah, I mean, yeah!” Richie rambles, nodding violently.

Ben smiles patiently, “So what would be so bad about loving him all the way?”

“I… I didn’t know… I mean, I’ve had sex with girls. It just doesn’t light a fire under my dick the same way this seems to. He’s so pretty, and I don’t quite know how to go back to seeing him the way I used to now that I see him so clearly. It’s like I’ve been looking at him without my glasses on my whole life, and now everything is so much less fuzzy. Like I understand it better now.” His eyes widen as the silence stretches on, Ben smiling softly the whole time. “I mean, uh, you know, he could hop on my dick and I wouldn’t say no. Then I’d have fucked the whole Kaspbrak clan.”

Ben’s nose wrinkles in distaste, so he doesn’t respond to that. Instead, he says, “Tell him, Richie. I promise it won’t go badly.”

“But what if he doesn’t want to fuck me back?”

“You really think all this is is sex, Richie?” Ben asks quietly. He offers him another smile, an encouraging one this time, “And I already promised—it won’t go badly.”

So Richie decides, fuck it. He’ll tell Eddie tomorrow.

But then he wakes up in a cold sweat from tonight’s newest erotic nightmare, this time leaning more heavily on the nightmarish aspect than the erotic, and he decides tomorrow can’t wait. Tonight. He’s doing this right now, because he can’t stand another moment not being close to Eddie.

He puts on his glasses, pads out of his room and knocks softly on Eddie’s door. “Eds? You up?” Silence. He knocks a bit harder. “Eddie?” He hears Eddie sniff harshly from inside his room, and something knocks loudly. “Eds? You okay?”

“Mmph,” comes Eddie’s muffled reply. “Come in, you dick.”

Richie smiles and does as he’s told. He can see Eddie relatively clearly through the slats in the blinds open to the moon high above them. He’s rubbing the side of his head, his hair a total mess, his shirt rumpled, his frown intense, and Richie realizes, fuck, I love this angry little goblin. Jesus Christ, I love him.

“Hitting your head on the headboard is way less fun when you’re by yourself,” he grumbles. He wraps an arm around his knees and tilts his head. “What’s up at… 3:50 AM?”

“I…” Richie breathes out unsteadily. He decides to go with the truth: “I had a nightmare.”

“Oh. Shit,” Eddie frowns, pulling back the blankets. “You wanna cuddle?”

Richie nods dramatically and pitches himself into Eddie’s bed, immediately wrapping himself around Eddie. Eddie snorts, laughs quietly, and turns in Richie’s hold, slotting their thighs together so they’re facing one another. “Dick. You know I don’t like to be the little spoon, ‘specially with you and your newborn-deer limbs.”

“Can’t you make an exception just this once, Spaghetti?” Richie smiles, but he’s really only teasing; he’s just fine with this.

“So long as you tell me what the dream was about.” Richie tenses in Eddie’s hold, thinking, shit, I really should’ve assumed he’d ask. “I mean, if you want. But until you tell me, I demand to be the big spoon.”

Richie sighs, turning in Eddie’s hold only because it’ll be easier to say it if he isn’t looking right at him. “So I’ve been having these… we’ll call them erotic nightmares.”

“That sounds like a term you thought of weeks ago and are very proud to finally get the chance to utter.”

“Die.” Eddie snorts. “Actually, don’t-don’t do that,” Richie whispers, “please don’t die.”

“I won’t,” Eddie says, sounding like he’s about to laugh but trying not to. “Was that what the dream was about tonight? Is that why you’ve been acting so weird lately?”

“Sort of, yeah. You were, uh, you were on top of me, and you… I didn’t even see it coming. Your heart, it was… I don’t even think it could ever happen in real life.”

Eddie slips a hand beneath Richie’s shirt, cupping his hip bone and rhythmically running his thumb in the hollow between it and his stomach. “It didn’t happen, Rich. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Richie breathes out, less shaky this time, and nods. “Okay.”

A long pause, and then, “You said these nightmares, they’re erotic.” Richie’s blood runs cold. Fuck, he didn’t want this to be how he said it. “Is that why I was on top of you?”

“Sort of,” Richie whispers. “Yeah.”

“Like… Like this?” Eddie dislodges his thigh out from between Richie’s and hooks it over his hips, forcing him to lay flat on the bed. Eddie hovers over him, eyes dark and electric in the moonlight. He looks ethereal, holy, and nothing like he did in the dream. “What happens next? When I’m above you like this?”

“It’s different every time,” Richie says all in one breath. Eddie’s boxer shorts are hanging and brushing against the tops of Richie’s thighs. He feels a light breeze away from spontaneously combusting. “Sometimes you dance for me.”

Eddie wrinkles his nose, laughing quietly, “I can’t dance.”

“I know that, but my dreams don’t.” Eddie smile drops in an instant.

“What else?”

“Sometimes you hold me down⁠—”

Richie cuts himself off with a gasp when Eddie nudges Richie’s hands out from where they’re balled in Eddie’s sheets and presses them down to the bed beside his head. “Like this?” Richie chokes, nodding. He can’t say anything. He can hardly breathe. “What’s next, Richie?”

“You-you grind on me ‘til you—oh, holy shit.” Eddie swivels his hips in a tight circle against Richie’s dick, both of them already hard.

“Yeah? You been dreamin’ of me like this, Rich? How long?”

“What?”

“How long,” he grinds down low, and Richie moans, “have you,” he does it again, and Richie gasps, keening loudly, “been dreaming of me? Because I’ve been dreaming of you for years, Rich.”

“Motherfucking tap-dancing Jesus, you have?” Richie demands.

“Of course I have. Sometimes, when I bring a boy home, I pretend he’s you.”

“Oh my God.”

“Sometimes I accidentally say your name.”

Richie bucks his hips, feeling wild, caged. “Eddie, please, I need—”

“What do you want, Rich? I’ll give you whatever you want.”

“Kiss me.” And he does. It’s everything and nothing like Richie dreamed it would be. It’s hot, searing, Eddie’s mouth a brand against his own, but the way Eddie is licking into his mouth feels nothing like he dreamed it would. It feels like he just wants to take care of Richie; he really wants to give Richie everything he asks for, and Richie feels drunk with the power-rush that brings. Beautiful, perfect, wonderful Eddie Kaspbrak wants to give him what he asks.

“Eddie,” he pants, and Eddie immediately pulls away, eyes liquid as they rake over Richie’s chest, still covered in his shirt. The light weight of it is suddenly stifling. “Please take off my shirt.”

“Of course, baby,” Eddie murmurs, unlocking their fingers and helping Richie sit up so he can do as he’s asked. “That better, angel?”

“Oh my God,” Richie whines, nodding. “This is so hot.”

Eddie smiles, “I agree. You’re definitely as beautiful as I dreamed you’d be.”

“You dreamed about me, too?” Richie sighs, suddenly feeling overwhelmed with the thought of Eddie stripping his dick to the girls Richie’s brought home.

“Of course, Richie,” Eddie responds, hushed as he maps out Richie’s torso with the palms of his hands. One of his thumbs catches on Richie’s nipple, and he hisses, then gasps when he does it again. “Sometimes it’s sex dreams, like yours, but sometimes I dream you take me out to eat, or to the movies. Once, I dreamed you asked me to marry you and I woke up crying.”

“Eddie,” Richie says, all broken into pieces, jagged edges that sound serrated. “I would. You know I would, right?”

Eddie smiles softly, leaning over Richie and lacing their fingers back together, but the weight of Eddie on top of him doesn’t feel so suppressive anymore. It’s a comfort. It’s everything he could never admit to wanting. “I do now.”

He captures Richie’s mouth again, kisses that fall over him like stars, like meteorites, planets exploding behind his eyelids and pop rocks fizzing in his blood. He’s a shaking mess by the time Eddie pulls back again, kissing his neck and then sucking a mark into his collarbone, to his pulse point. He feels ready to burst, nearing absolute explosion.

“I want to fuck you, Richie,” Eddie says against his skin, and Richie moans to the ceiling, eyes rolling back in his head. “I want to fuck you, but I need to know this isn’t a one time thing. I won’t be my best friend’s sexual experiment, and I won’t be your fuck buddy. I can’t.”

“Eddie, I… look at me, please look at me,” Richie begs, unlacing their fingers and cupping Eddie’s cheeks. He looks terrified, ready to work himself into a panic attack, so Richie says, “I want to fuck you too, but more than that, I want to fuck your heart.”

Eddie snorts and goes boneless, his forehead knocking into Richie’s chin. “I hate you so much. I can’t believe you just said you want to fuck my heart, that’s so gross, what does that even mean?”

“It means exactly what it sounds like,” Richie says, proud that he managed to distract Eddie from the burgeoning panic. “I want to fuck your heart.”

“No, I want to fuck your heart,” Eddie shoots back, frowning intensely. Richie’s responding smile is blinding.

“We’re heart-switches.”

“This is the worst day of my life.”

“Sure, Eds.”

“Don’t call me Eds in bed! I’m outlawing all nicknames when we’re hard, it’s uncouth!”

“What about…” Richie runs the tip of his nose over the thin skin of Eddie’s neck, “baby?”

“Oh,” Eddie sighs, elbows buckling where he’s holding himself over top of Richie, “baby’s good.”

“Yeah?” Richie smiles, hooking his hands up under Eddie’s shirt and bunching it under his arms. “What about angel, my love, is that one okay?”

“This isn’t fair,” Eddie whines, falling down to his elbows and crushing Richie as he laughs, “you can’t use my weak heart against me.”

“Weak?” Richie smiles against Eddie’s skin, feeling more at home than he ever has in his life. “Nah. I think you’re the strongest person I know.”

“Richie…” Eddie smiles, embarrassed, and leans up to kiss him again, which is fine with Richie, because he’s embarrassed, too. Thank god for erotic nightmares, Richie thinks as he cups Eddie’s hip and licks into his mouth, finally free, finally alive.

[planetsam]

could u write something were Alex stayed with michael the night rosa died? happy ending of course!!

He’s going to die.

That’s the only thought he has as the world goes white and hot. This is different from the exorcism or those foster dads who spoke with their belts. Any movement he makes he can feel the sickening sensation of something inside him shifting. He can’t think past the blinding pain. He’s going to die on this floor is his only thought. Every breath he takes brings the world back into focus and the pain gets that much worse. Everything seems to slow down. The last thing he expect to see in the world is the sight of Alex on top of his father. There’s blood, Michael realizes dimly. Blood is everywhere. He realizes that Alex isn’t stopping. His tongue is thick in his mouth but he tries to force the words out.

“‘Lex?” Alex doesn’t stop, “Alex!” He still doesn’t stop. Michael sets his nerves and moves his hand, just a bit. The pain explodes again and he thinks he gasps, but there’s a ringing in his ears and he can feel his throat working. “Alex.”

Alex is there suddenly, crouched with him under the table. Horror is painted all over his beautiful features and Michael can see the fingerprint discoloration from his father’s grip. Michael looks at Alex’s blood splattered knuckles and then back at the limp form of his dad. Dimly he remembers that Alex is the youngest of four. Everyone’s in the military. He also remembers prom and Alex slugging that douche. Alex knows how to throw a punch. He doesn’t look like it right now though. He looks sick. He’s pale and his eye makeup is smudged. He reaches for Michael and then wipes his hands on his pants quickly when he sees the blood on them. His hands hesitate and Michael has to fight the desperate urge to move his own hand.

“My hand,” he chokes out.

“God,” Alex squeezes his eyes shut and then gets up. Michael is mindful of how he turns as Alex grabs a bed sheet and rips a long strip from it. It’s easy to find a board and he comes back over, “I’m going to move your hand onto this,” he says.

“No, don’t—“ Michael starts to protest.

“It’s okay,” Alex says, his voice coming out much stronger, “I’ll be careful.”

Michael looks up at him. Whatever his hand looks like must be horrible, Alex has gone several shades paler. But he smiles reassuringly. Michael looks away and presses his face into his own arm. Alex is so carefully and Michael does his absolute best to muffle the sound he makes as Alex gets his hand onto the board. He wraps the strips of the sheet around it and carefully brings it across his chest. He secures the board and hand to his bare chest and then comes back around. Michael realizes he must be truly in shock because Alex has his hoodie in his hands and gently tugs it over Michael’s shoulders.

“I’m taking you to the hospital,” he says.

“No,” Michael says, “no hospitals.” Alex stares at him. Michael takes a chance and looks down at his hand. His stomach rolls and he’s sick before he can stop himself. Those don’t look like his fingers. Alex looks gutted when he raises his head, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, “I can’t go to the hospital. I need Max.”

“Max?” Alex frowns, “Max Evans?”

“Yes,” Michael grips the front of Kyle’s shirt, “I need Max.”

“I don’t understand. You need the hospital,” he says, “Michael your hand—“ he shakes his head, “we can call Max while we’re on our way there.”

“No, no if I go to the hospital,” he scrambles for the excuse he needs, “they’ll send me back to my foster dad.”

“Then we’ll lie,” Alex says, guiding him to his feet, “you can’t lose your hand.”

“I can’t afford a doctor,” he tries.

“I’ll pay for it,” Alex tells him rashly.

Michael stumbles and realizes they’re outside. Being steered towards the car. Ever step is agony and when he blinks again he’s in the car. Alex is in the drivers seat. He tries to start the engine and Michael bows his head. If he blacks out from the pain, which seems like it’s a real possibility, he’s going to wind up in the hospital. In the hospital means that they will know what he is. He’s not that different, far as he can tell, but he’s different somehow. He curls over his mangled hand which throbs agonizingly. He needs his brother and a gallon of acetone and Alex doesn’t—can’t—know any of that. It’s been told to him time and time again. He fully agrees. Or he has up until this moment. He would sell his soul for Max or acetone right now.

“Alex,” he says, grabbing Alex’s hand, “no hospitals.”

“I don’t understand,” Alex says, “why not? If I don’t take you to a hospital you’re going to be maimed! This is my fault, I’ll make sure you don’t go back into the system. You just need to trust me. I can’t—I can’t have you be maimed because of me.”

“Alex,” he repeats his name, “I can’t go to the hospital.”

“Why not?!”

“I’m an alien.”

Alex whips his head towards him so fast, Michael thinks he might have cracked his neck. Alex stares like he can’t decipher what Michael is saying and Michael doesn’t blame him. He’s never said the words out loud like this. Alex isn’t laughing in his face, which is what he thought it would always be. He’s also not flooring it to the nearest psych ward. Which is also how Michael thought this would go. He’s just staring at him. Probably trying to decide if he’s in shock or not. Michael’s pretty sure that he’s in shock but he is also an alien. He knows what it’s going to do but he has to prove to Alex what he is. So he focuses and uses his abilities to tug Alex’s necklace off and hold it in front of him for as long as he can. It drops into his lap as Michael opens the door and vomits again. When he turns around, Alex is wedged against the drivers side door staring at the necklace in his lap.

“I need Max,” he says, leaning his head back and closing his eyes, “Max and acetone and I’ll answer whatever you want. Just—no hospitals. Please.”

Michael doesn’t try to hide his sob of relief as the car hums to life.

When he opens his eyes again Alex is sliding back into the car. Michael expected them to be in a drugstore but they’re somewhere he doesn’t recognize. Alex digs into the bag and pulls out a bottle. Michael’s eyes widen. They’re usually drinking nail polish remover that has a percentage of Acetone but this is just acetone. He barely remembers he only has one working hand. Then he has to watch Alex take off the plastic wrapping and unscrew the cap. Michael is sure he has questions but his survival instincts kick in and he grabs the bottle, pouring it down his throat. The pain instantly lessens its death grip on him. He lowers the bottle, letting the pain relief coast through his veins. His head clears, just enough for him to look over at meet Alex’s stunned gaze. Alex pulls out his phone and looks from Michael to the information and back again. Michael wants to laugh.

“I’m not trying to off myself with nail polish remover,” he says, “it’s, uh, it’s like a pain reliever,” he explains, “for me.”

“Because you’re an alien,” Alex says.

Michael nods.

“I had sex with an alien,” he says, his voice still dull and distant.

“We prefer the term probing,” Michael says.

“Oh my God,” Alex looks at him with complete horror, “I had sex with an alien who likes terrible puns,” his eyes widen, “I made out with an alien in the ufo emporium,” he grips the steering wheel, “oh my God,” he repeats.

“I appreciate your very valid right to freak out right now,” Michael says, “but is there any way we can get to Max.”

“Oh—oh!” Alex looks at his hand, “yes, hang on,” he starts the car again.

Michael slumps back in the seat, seeing if it helps if he gingerly rests his hand against the board. It doesn’t. He still feels sick and the pain is getting worse, even with the acetone. He can also feel distress coming from his siblings. He has to get to them. He needs Max’s help. He also feels like he needs to be sick again or he might black out.

“Hey, talk to me,” Alex says, breaking through his fog, “Michael, talk to me,” he repeats, “tell me about being an alien.”

Michael laughs.

“Where—“ he shakes his head, “where do I start?”

“Uh,” Alex fumbles, “the beginning. Start at the beginning.”

“I was in a pod,” he starts.

The story is weird to say aloud and in one go. Several times Alex almost gets them into full on accidents. But the story comes out, as cut and dry as Alex can make it. He tells him about the pods, about waking up, about being separated. He tells him as much as he can before they get to where the others are. They aren’t alone. Michael turns to Alex as fast as he can, before Alex gets out of the car.

“Stay here,” he says.

“You have one hand,” Alex points out.

“You gotta stay here,” Michael says, “I don’t know what happened but if you stay here you could—“ he doesn’t know what to say, “you could walk away from this.”

Alex’s eyes darken and he leans forward. Michael swallows at the determination in his eyes. Everything’s gone to shit and is going to go even more in that direction, but looking at Alex’s dark eyes in his smudged makeup, the most coherent thought Michael has is that he loves him. That he would go for his father again and again, how ever many times he had to to keep him safe. But the words tangle in his mouth as he stares at him.

“No,” Alex says and gets out of the car.

Michael scrambles to keep up.

There is so much death.

Michael’s seen one person die because of them but there’s three. And a whole lot of questions where Alex is involved. But Alex is beautiful and defiant and the unwelcome voice of reason as they stage a cover up and Michael lies to protect Isobel. When he does, Alex grips his good hand so tightly Michael thinks that maybe they can get through this. One alien or all the aliens, it doesn’t matter who killed them. Max tries to bring Rosa back and winds up collapsed there, barely able to move. Alex helps them stage the wreck on the condition they put all the girls in the back seat. Let the police run circles around how that happened.

“What about his hand?” Alex asks.

“I can’t,” Max mumbles, “right now. Michael—“

“I’ll be fine for tonight,” Michael assures him. He looks at Alex pleadingly. Alex clenches his jaw, “get him home Iz.”

“Tomorrow,” Max says.

Michael nods. He holds it together right up until the pair of them leave. Then he kind of folds over his arm and tries not to scream. Everything is wrong and the pain in his hand is unbelievable. But Alex wraps his arms around him, whispering nonsense as he helps support his arm and guides him back to the car. They don’t have anywhere to go, Michael realizes. Either of them. Alex doesn’t seem very upset by that and Michael has never had anywhere else to go. Michael directs them to his old spot and directs Alex to setting up the tarp. They crawl under, tucking together in his sleeping bag. The blue paints Alex a different shade of beautiful and Michael stares at him.

“I wanted to tell you what I was,” he says. Alex looks at him, “before we—“ he trails off.

“Had sex?”

“Kissed,” Michael says.

“Does anyone else know?” Alex asks. Michael shakes his head, “I’m the first person you told?” He nods. Alex looks at him for another moment and shifts closer, “how’s your hand?”

“It hurts,” Michael says honestly, “but I’d do it again.”

Alex dips his head, resting his forehead briefly on Michael’s shoulder. The future before them is dizzying with all of its possibilities. Alex knows and they’ve wound up together anyway. Alex knows and he’s not under the same roof as his abusive dick of a father. The truck’s not ideal, but for the first time it feels like a start and not a life sentence. Michael has no idea if they can figure this out or even what figuring it out might look like. But he presses his cheek to the crown of Alex’s head and like he has since Alex came into his life properly, he closes his eyes and lets himself believe he has a place here. 

[cr-scribbles]

Oh no what's this? It's back again? Yup! Welcome back! It's me the judy, back here with another review! This time you think it's gonna be easier, buT NOPE IT JUST HURTS MORE! The second chapter is my favorite so far just because I get so much feels from these heckies! The third chapter was also good, but I will get there once we're finished with this one. Here is the link to the first part along with the second one too! > https://cr-incorrect-quotes.tumblr.com/post/190279246139/cr-incorrect-quotes-hello-welcome-to-my-first

This post will most likely be the same due to there being so many pages that I want to talk about to the point of not being able to fit everything into one so yeah! Expect a part 2 for Chapter 2! If you want to read the comic, here it is > http://children-rekindled.top/?c=1&p=1 Let's start!

Oh no we all know what this means that little heck is finally back and I was already screaming because of course I would be?? I missed him so much y'all- ALSO DANIEL SOUNDS SO CONFUSED AND THAT HURT CAUSE I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IS COMING AND I DON'T WANNA READ IT AGAIN, but surprise! Bon made it worse this time!! I'll get to that later-

EW EW E W EW When I was first reading this and even now, iT'S SO DISGUSTING?? The visual of a soul just having to come out of a mouth of a corpse is gross in all ways omg I wonder if there is a reason behind Freddy having no eyes in the first panel though?? Apart from the fact that it is just creepy, it doesn't show up anymore. Instead, on the same page, it just goes back to the normal eyes. It was probably just a creepy factor put into it to make it look more morbid, but sometimes creators have reasons!

Sometimes I sit here, glad nothing else was shown because I would rather not have to see him climb out of there. aLSO SAMMY HELPS HIM OUT AND THAT MAKES ME UWU! he really needs all the help he can get and I'm glad someone is there for him. Y'all don't know how much I love this blind babey boy

BABEY NOOO IM COMING TO HELP YOUUU This panel is good, bUT SO SAD OMG I WANNA HELP HIM CAUSE HE'S IN A LOT OF PAIN QMQ I don't even wanna know his thoughts right now and how confused he is internally. Does he even consider how he would still be moving around even when suffering this really bad pain? He's probably just in too much shock and denial to wrap his head around it.

SOBBING SOUNDS Daniel freaking out over this hurts me every time omg I just want to hug him?? He just wants to go home and we all know that at this point, he can't even do that anymore.

BIANCAAAAAAAA What was she even doing?? Unlike Daniel, she had somehow already gotten out, but was just staring at the ground?? Was she confused about something and just lost in thought to the point of completely zoning out till Daniel realized she was there? Maybe she wasn't even there for long. She could have been still processing all of this pain(?) ALSO DANIEL'S REALIZATION THAT HIS NAME WAS SAID MAKES ME SOB I LOVE HIM SM

can Bianca hug me like that??? Please???? I want someone to hug me like that one day I'm gonna beg- SHE'S HECKIEING CRYING AND THAT HURTS A LOT IM QWQ I mean of course she would be?? She saw Daniel die right in front of her. Bianca being so worried yet not even questioning how he isn't just dead already due to the severe blood loss makes me really wonder how much denial they are going through at the moment. Although who would wanna think they died and became a ghost? For people who don't even believe in that stuff, it would be hard to even accept. If you're a ghost, that means you're dead. There's no going back. ALSO THE PUPPET STARES INTO MY SOUL AND IS TERRIFYING- everyone thank bon for giving us another terrifying image

AHAHA N E C C the smol good girl is coming very soon and I'm so excited!! I love her sm,,why is she hiding though?? Did she get scared due to all of the screaming and sounds going on around that she just decided to hide behind this big animatronic that could protect her from the dangers out there?

THANKS FOR CALLING HER OUT CAUSE SHE'S SMALL BIANCA- Well Charlie's design is definitely a lot different than the one in the original! She still looks heckieing red and burned up, but doesn't have that weird mouth like last time.

OH NO OH NO NO NO SAMMY WHAT HAVE U DONE- Charlie is already starting to freak out and that hurts. I love the different reactions we get here because Charlie is just in denial, hoping it is a dream while Daniel doesn't even look like he has proceeded it all fully yet till the next page where he is basically having a complete mental breakdown. I really want to know how Bianca feels about this entire thing too.

THERE IS A LOT I WANT TO TALK ABOUT HERE! For one, it might be one of my favorite pages that really hit me hard to the point of being my emotional mess of a self- I feel as though Bon really portrayed them reacting to being dead rather well? Or at least he did with Daniel and it hit in the feels right enough. Being someone who would die for Daniel, it hurt reading this for the first time because I'm sure we all want to do what Bianca does and just give him a tight hug. Did them freaking out happen in the original? I don't remember actually? from what I remember, Bianca was the one reacting the most to all of it- Bianca just crying over how Daniel is having this mental breakdown really hurt because she wants him to be okay and realizing they aren't would just hurt to the point of actually going and comforting him. I REALLY WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT HOW SHE FEELS WITH THE SITUATION- Was her breaking down because of Daniel being all sad mixed with her just reacting to the entire thing?? It's also shown in Chapter 3, but Bianca is really caring towards Daniel and most of the time wants to make him feel better in certain situations. If she wasn't able to save or even help him before, this is her chance now.

FRANCIS IS CRYING AGAIN I REPEAT FRANCIS IS CRYING-

Like I said before, the difference in reactions towards all of this is great. It's obvious that he was emotional about it too, but instead of having some sort of mental breakdown, he just "accepted" it and tried to figure out what they can do. It's understandable cause what else are they supposed to do when in front of reality??

OMG POOR BOYO!! HOW IS HE EVEN STANDING AIAUFIAKF for a while, I just thought his side got slashed and he bled out, nOT THAT HIS ENTIRE SIDE JUST GOT RIPPED OUT LIKE WOW OK THAT MUST HURT LIKE HELL- honestly Francis feeling really sorry about not being able to save Charlie just hurts sm?? THESE KIDDOS FEEL BAD CAUSE THEY WEREN'T ABLE TO SAVE ONE ANOTHER AND IT JUST HHH 

OH NO NOT THIS AGAIN DAMMIT- At least this time it's not coming out of a mouth of a corpse, but jeez Sammy pls chill- I love how the black substance just goes along with the mouth so it looks like the inside of the Puppet's mouth is just oil or some black liquid. Speaking of that, I also love how the blood is black!! I forgot the reason for that, but it gives them a cool look!

sammy please chill

they don't even know him yet and he's acting like a complete psychopath. If I was logical, I would think he is! Being there for who knows how long would do something to someone! Especially something would could easily be hinted at here through his insanity even when just getting out. 

I don't trust his cute face, but dammit I love him so much already?? Like he was just acting all crazy a pAGE BEFORE, AND NOW HE LOOKS LIKE A SMOL SQUOFT??? It really shows how much he can switch between personalities. I fear for the future after this experience. 

"Oh, you noticed. Heh." UH YEAH OF COURSE?? IT'S A KNIFE IN YOUR CHEST???

ALSO AHAHAHA FRANCIS'S FACE I CAN'T HANDLE IT

Honestly I feel bad for Daniel because all of this stuff is going on and he can't even see anything?? Like if something really bad just suddenly happened, he would have no idea because all he can get from the situation are the reactions from his friends. I wonder how terrifying it would be when there's so much sound around like during the day?? Big hugs for Daniel y'all 

wow possession! That's really cool, bUT WHAT IS GOING ON NOW OH NO- 

OH HECKIEING BEES THAT'S NOT GOOD- Michael's design was heavily changed from last time, but honestly I adore this design sm?? There is a lot less wires so yay he isn't just a bloody mess like last time!! Okay but I wonder if Michael could still take off his head like last time?? Last time, that was shown through some anger from Francis, but this time it's different and that's not shown!! I wonder if it will ever be though.

MICHAEL NO THAT'S NO WHAT A SANE PERSON SAYS- although I mean?? He does have a point! Even though being dead is a huge hit in general and idk how that would even feel, actually being with friends could have a huge impact on the situation. Imagine if only one died and was stuck there? That would have a completely different impact. I don't think Michael should brush off the fact that they are all dead now, but I do understand why he even mentions that. Trying to stay positive, but maybe try a bit differently babey-

The part I feared the most, but actually turned out really good? Around the beginning at least! In this version, Francis has much more of a reason for actively being really upset at Michael especially due to what he just said. Although maybe he should chill a bit because some things he says are really eh?? Michael never meant it like that and Francis is just freaking out and yelling at him, but like I said, he actually has a reason and I can't stay that mad. I would hate this entire thing too, although I would be a lot more emotional than angry 

OKAY THAT'S REALLY OVER THE LINE FRANCIS HOLY HECK-

Charlie has all the rights to be upset at him because him just saying that iS AWFUL?? LIKE DUDE YOU ALL ARE DEAD AND YOU ARE APOLOGIZING FOR SAVING HIM AND SAYING THAT IF YOU HAD KNOWN, YOU SHOULD HAVE JUST LET THE PERSON KILL HIM?? UH- THAT'S NOT NICE AT ALL PLEASE APOLOGIZE

TELL EM SAMMY!

at least in this version, he gets to the point and it isn't just walls of text aHAIDIAOGKS Sammy please don't blame Daniel though?? He's heCKIEING BLIND WHAT THE HECKIE COULD HE EVEN DO?? wAIT OH NO. IF THIS IS A REBOOT THEN SOME SCENE WITH DANIEL AND SAMMY MIGHT BE REDONE HH IM AFRAID IT'S GONNA EITHER BE MORE FEELS RELATED OR JUST MORE CHILL THAN LAST TIME DUE TO THE PACING?? Sadly it’s time for me to go and make the next part thing to take away from this? This chapter is my favorite so far because of all the feels and there is more so get ready for that!! I'll be back with part 2 eventually! Most of us knows what happens there. Will Sammy find Michael? How will he actually help? Find out next time on aaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[lamujerarana]

14 with reed and ben! Your writing is A+ u inspire me!

“Give it up, Stretch,” Ben complains, bumping the back of his head against the wall of the alien prison cell in which he and Reed are trapped, awaiting their imminent execution, all because Ben was maybe very insulting to the emperor. It’s not his fault that the emperor looked like a piece of fruit someone’d left out in the sun too long. He supposed that saying that to the emperor had probably been a bad idea, but in his defense, the emperor was a dick. “There’s no way out and you know it. I’m gettin’ tired just watchin’ you.”

Ben has already exhausted himself by pounding his giant fists against every wall of the cell, but to no avail. His superstrength did not even dent the strange, alien metal.

Ben, resigned to the fate he had brought upon them both, had simply reverted to his human form and collapsed onto the hard, narrow cot in the cell.

Ever since then, he’s been listlessly watching as Reed prods and pokes at every nook and cranny, desperately seeking the escape Ben had not managed to achieve.

Reed shoots Ben an annoyed glance from where he’s stretched up to the ceiling. “There is always a way out, Ben.”

Ben sighs. He loves how incorrigibly optimistic Reed is, but it also frustrates him endlessly that there is not a sensible bone in Reed’s body. Ben has always been the more practical of the two—he keeps Reed grounded by reminding him that there are limits even to what his genius can accomplish.

“There ain’t always a way out,” Ben says dryly. “Take it from me.”

“That’s what you said about being the Thing,” Reed says triumphantly. Ben doesn’t have to see Reed’s face to know that he is smiling. “But look at you now.”

“Your cure’s lasted this long,” Ben says darkly. “We don’t know that it’ll last forever.”

Reed goes very still, as though the thought had not occurred to him, when it has been all that Ben has been able to think about since the day Reed had called Ben to his lab, strapped him into a dauntingly complex machine, and inundated Ben in a series of blinding rays.

Ben had emerged fully able to control his transformations into the Thing. The best of both possible worlds—able to remain on the team and protect the people he loves and able to have an entirely human life at the same time.

The thought that has kept Ben up more nights than not is the fear that one day he will morph into the Thing and be stuck, once more, in that unending living nightmare from which he can never awaken. Surrounded by humanity, yet unable to participate in it. Separated from it all by a thick wall of orange rock. Unable to feel much of anything.

Reed’s body shrinks down to normal size, and then he crosses the room and sinks down on the cot next to Ben, arms folded over his chest.

“Ben,” he frowns, concern written on every line of his face, “are you afraid that you’ll become the Thing again?”

Ben shrugs a shoulder as casually as he can. He doesn’t want Reed to know how heavily this fear has weighed on him. “Yeah. Maybe. I dunno. Wouldn’t be the first time I thought I was cured and then…” Had my humanity torn away from me. “…changed into the Thing again.”

Reed puts his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “It’s not going to happen,” he says firmly. “I tested this every way I know how. It’s permanent. And even if it did happen again, I’d simply cure you again. No matter how hard I had to work or how long it took, I would never give up. Ben, I will be with you, at your side, always. It’s where I am meant to be. You must know that.”

Ben does know that. It’s what Reed has always done. Ben can and would never question the love and loyalty Reed feels for him.

But Ben cannot even count how many times Reed has found what he swore was a permanent cure, only to have it all fall apart and send Reed back to square one once more. And then Ben is left, in the interim, living what can best be characterized as a half-life.

There is, on the bright side, every chance that Ben’s endless cycle of torment is going to end rather bloodily tomorrow morning.

“Well,” Ben says lightly, “we’re probably not gonna live past gettin’ executed tomorrow, so…”

“We’re not going to die, Benjamin,” Reed says calmly, as though he is stating a fact. “We’ve been in worse predicaments than this and up against more terrifying foes and we’ve lived.”

Ben runs a hand shakily through his hair. He wishes that he could believe that this time was the same. But everything seems so heavily stacked against them, and if there is one thing Ben learned when he was a soldier, it’s that everyone’s luck runs out sometime. He can feel it, in the pit of his stomach, the certainty that he simply isn’t getting out of this one. “C’mon. We’re trapped in a cell we can’t get out of. The execution’s in about five hours. Even as the Thing, I ain’t strong enough to break us out. I can’t beat their soldiers either. Susie could, but she and the kid don’t even know where we are or that we’re in trouble. Face it, buddy, we’re sunk.”

“Sue will find us and save us,” Reed says confidently. “I know she will.”

Ben casts a skeptical glance at Reed. “She doesn’t even know we’re missing, Reed. Or what planet we’re on.”

Reed chin tilts upward stubbornly. “She’ll find us.”

Ben isn’t quite as sure of that as Reed seems to be. He thinks…this might be it. And if it is, if it is, he has to tell Reed. He can’t die without saying it. He just can’t. “Yeah, but if she don’t, there’s just one thing I gotta say to you. That I’ve wanted to say to you for years. Reed, look, I—”

Reed cuts him off by springing to his feet as though scalded. “No! I don’t want to hear this, Ben. Stop talking this way. We’re going to live and I don’t care how dire everything seems, it’s going to be all right, and—”

Ben catches Reed’s hand and stops him dead in his tracks. Reed stares down at Ben, and then down to where their hands are joined together, eyes wild.

“Reed,” Ben pleads, “let me say this. Just in case.”

Ben doesn’t know what it is that Reed sees in the depths of his eyes, but it seems persuasive enough. He gives a small, resigned nod and then sinks silently back down next to Ben.

Ben doesn’t let go of Reed’s hand. He stares at it, that point of heat, that point of contact, where their bodies are joined together, as though he cannot tear his eyes away.

“Are you ever going to say anything, Ben, or are you just going to stare at my hand?”

“Whine, whine, whine,” Ben complains. He rolls his eyes melodramatically. It’s almost instinctive, this banter between them. “Don’t you ever do anything else? I’m workin’ up the nerve, just so’s you know.”

“Ah,” Reed says, and Ben can hear the wry amusement in his voice. “The nerve. I see. I have always found you very short on nerve, Ben. Timid, shy, and retiring, that’s you.”

The corner of Ben’s mouth ticks upward. “You’re a pain in my ass, Reed, you know that?” He takes a deep breath, raises his eyes, and meets Reed’s gaze. He’s dived into battle many times before without a single twinge of fear, so why is it that his heart feels as though it is going to beat its way out of his chest over this? “I really got no idea why I’m so in love with you, but I am.”

If Ben had thought Reed’s eyes were wide before, they are like saucers now, his jaw hanging almost comically wide open, and his face paler than Ben thinks he has ever seen it.

“Well,” Ben says, smiling, “would ya look at that? Looks like I finally figured out a way to get you to stop whining.”

“Ben,” Reed says hoarsely, his hand tightening around Ben’s, “was that a joke? You know I’m not always good at telling when you’re joking and I—”

“Wasn’t a joke,” Ben interrupts, with a slight shake of his head. “Not even a little. Reed. C’mon. Did you really not know at all? You gotta be the only person on this—I mean, on our—planet who hasn’t noticed that I am head over heels for you. People spend five minutes with us and they know.”

“I didn’t,” Reed says, subdued. “Really. I had no clue at all.” He clears his throat. “How long?”

“Let’s see,” Ben says, pretending to think about it, although he knows, of course he knows, “we were eighteen years old, I walked into the crappy dorm room I’d been assigned to with a guy I thought was gonna be the biggest nerd ever and probably a dick. Instead, I found the most beautiful guy I’d ever seen standin’ there and smilin’ at me, and I think I fell in love the second I saw him. I mean. You.”

Reed half rises to his feet. His face is a splotchy red. Ben doesn’t think he’s ever seen Reed this apoplectic. “YOU’VE BEEN IN LOVE WITH ME FOR EIGHT YEARS AND YOU’VE NEVER SAID A WORD?”

“I said I fell in love with you the second I saw you. I didn’t say I knew it. Took me a while to figure out I liked boys—which, yeah, happened ‘cause I had a lot of feelings for you that I couldn’t explain away—and then I had to do the whole coming to terms with it thing and then I had to get a handle on the fact that I was in love with my best friend. So. Took me a few years to get to the point where I could admit it even to myself.”

“Well, why didn’t you say something then?”

“Because by that point I’d known you for like four years and I knew you didn’t like guys. Or anyone, as far as I could tell. You never seemed very interested in the whole love and sex and dating thing everyone else was doing. You’ve never dated anyone, Reed, the whole time I’ve known you.”

“No,” Reed says bitterly. “I admit that I wasn’t interested in any of that for a long time, but once I met you…why would I have dated anyone else? I had already found the love of my life. You.”

“You…what?” Ben asks, and he is beginning to understand how shocked Reed must have felt at his own declaration of love. “Wait. What?”

Reed is nodding earnestly. “I also fell in love with you the moment I saw you. I never saw the point in settling for someone else if I couldn’t have you. I had no interest in anyone else, and I never have. Before I met you, I had never been in love with, never so much as been attracted to, anyone. I admit it was unsettling at first, feeling that way, since I had no reference point for it, and I had no idea what it all meant for a long time. And by the time I figured out that I loved you, you had joined the army, and I thought my feelings weren’t reciprocated, and so I had resigned myself to living out the rest of my life pining hopelessly for you.”

Ben shakes his head. He’s trying to wrap his head around this, but it’s giving him a headache. “So…I’ve been in love with you for eight years…and you’ve been in love with me…and…we just…never figured it out?”

“It would appear so,” Reed says, and then, in a hushed tone, “Johnny can never know.”

Ben pales at the thought. “The squirt would never let us live this down.”

“Perhaps it would be best if we were executed tomorrow morning,” Reed says thoughtfully, and Ben’s not sure if he’s kidding.

“Well, screw that,” Ben says. “I got a reason to live now. Get us out of here, Reed.”

Reed looks amused. “I thought you doubted my ability to escape.”

Ben shoots him a look. “Stretch, if I die without ever getting to have sex with you, I’m gonna kill you myself. Time to stop messin’ around.”

Reed smiles slyly at him. “Well, can I have a kiss for good luck?”

Ben can’t help smiling back. “Yeah?”

“It stimulates the synapses,” Reed says, and Ben can’t tell if he’s being serious or not. “Might help me arrive at an epiphany.”

“Stimulation. I can help with that,” Ben grins, reeling Reed in for their first kiss.

It’s been a long time coming. Ben hopes it won’t be the last.

***

Reed never does get around to figuring out a way out of the cell. Ben keeps him too busy.

***

Ten minutes before their scheduled execution, the door to their cell bursts open, torn off its hinges, and there, silhouetted in the doorway, is Sue.

“I’m Susan Storm, and I’m here to rescue you,” she says, posing heroically.

“We know your name,” Reed says, baffled. “We’ve known you for years.”

“She’s—Reed, she’s quoting Star Wars,” Ben says. “I know you’ve seen Star Wars because Johnny and I made you watch it.”

“Oh, yes,” Reed says. “The ones that don’t realize that sound can’t travel in a vacuum. It’s very distracting.” Watching movies with Reed is an experience because he scoffs at every scientific inaccuracy. “And by the way, Sue is here, and I told you—”

Ben raises a hand to stop him. “You even say it and I will clobber you so hard you’ll see little tweety birds spinning ‘round your head.”

“Birds?” Reed frowns, puzzled. “Why would I see birds? And what is a “tweety”?”

“You ain’t never seen a cartoon? Even as a kid?”

“I was busy designing antigravity platforms when I was a child.” He winces. “And crushing my mother’s prized flower beds. That was on me.”

“You’ve been deprived, Stretch. I hope you know this means we’re watching cartoons the second we get back home.”

“I don’t know if I want—”

“Would you two stop bickering like an old married couple?” Sue scowls, hands on her hips. “We’ve got to get moving or you two are dead.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ben and Reed both say meekly, and they follow after her.

[sixcastappreciation]

sixcago gave me my gay rights

alternative title: review of the evening sixcago show on july third

this is like almost 4k and its mostly just rambling but i need to express how much i love sixcago

like at least half of this is just me being gay so i bolded some of the things that i found really interesting and isnt just me like, freaking out

so to start off: holy shit. the energy of the entire show was amazing, it was really funny and fun and the acting/dancing/singing was on point like i cant think of a single complaint on the part of any of them.

so to get into the actual show

ex wives

when the curtain came up and the smoke started pouring out i actually felt my soul leave my body it was such a good moment

less than thirty seconds in brittney mack made eye contact with me and i swear to god my heart stopped and i honestly had trouble focusing on the rest of the song

i am not exaggerating that is the whole truth and nothing but the truth

shes............. literally so good im still shaking as i write this like three hours later

the third repetition of the rhyme where they all sound kinda pissed off? they nailed that

adrianna was so cute when she said “you wont try that again”

andrea holy shit. thats really a wrap on that

abby got that like, kinda head in the clouds thing that i feel like is janes Brand during this part

when he saw my portrait he was like JaaAAaaa

i love brittney mack

courtney knew what she was doing with that prick line. get it girl

anna has the most angelic voice i swear to god

the six of them work really well together on stage???? like i know its all choreo and stuff but you could Feel the energy that they had together it was good

oh man the choreo for the end. im so gay

intro thingy:

adrianna with that riff!!!!! we stan

annas face after “herstory” was iconic. she knew what she had done wrong

you couldnt hear the intro for maggie bc people were cheering so loud

the way adrianna says maria made me gay

abby also knows what she had to say. she knows how cursed janes sense of humor is and she was really playing it up

protestent............ protestant

“we’ll tell you what you want what you really really want” this made me laugh so hard i dont rly remember the next like thirty seconds because i was dying

“the biggest.... the firmest......... the fullest..............” im. i cant

no way

“maria” AGAIN adrianna please. please i cant handle it

“OH muy bien aHHah” not to be Lesbian On Main but fuck this was so cute

her emotion during the monologue was SO funny

it was peak, it was so good

she really gets it. i dont totally know what it is but this aragon monologue gets it

when she said “really trying” she did like, a motion. i cant go into more detail but Fuck

so after “move me into a convent” everyone like, gathered around aragon and adrianna did a

well idk what youd call it but a like

her entire torso swung around in a huge circle right before “i dont think i’d look that good in a wimple”

and idk what it was but that part just made me Lose It

adrianna had this way of making it all a little funnier?

like catherine is usually pretty Serious, i think but it felt like adrianna knew she was playing a character who was Like That, if you will, and was kinda leaning into breaking the fourth wall a little

i can probably elaborate if that doesnt make sense

you say its a pity cos quoting leviticus ill end up kiddiless all my life

she said that with such conviction goddamn

oh, he doesnt remember

this was so good

the “sh-”s were really funny

the fucking. i dont know what it is but the *ting*

holy shit

i cant put into words

how much i loved that part

the pause after “i’ll go” was............ expansive

i just checked it was 10 whole seconds

that doesnt sound long but it felt like forever

she went high on “end of my life” and thank u for mine adrianna hicks

the amount of no’s was impressive and im heart eyes for it

adrianna just had really good stage presence

like i caught myself looking at her during the dance breaks of all the songs when i wasnt looking at brittney

it was just so fun to watch her go!

dluh

during the intro of like “yeah, you know, the really important one” andrea was doing some Dumb Shit in the background

like i dont know exactly what it was but she was just like

idk like noodling around in the back

and i caught her eye and she like, smiled a little

the gasps the rest of them did were....... cute

then andrea busted out a full on fucking witches cackle

then she stuck her tongue out and looked like she was taking a selfie and it was so cute

like, her tongue was OUT

“not my thing” had the BIGGEST uwu energy of anything ive ever heard

i thought people were kidding when they said andrea boleyn had uwu energy

they were not

pret a manger barely came across as a real line it was more like, an experience

the sorry not sorry choreo. its so funny and cute and simultaneously cursed

the way andrea delivered her lines here was just

it was like, cutesy and fun but also kind of cursed

uwu

when she said “are you blind” andrea like, gestured to herself, in a like “look how hot i am” kinda way

which might be the standard? either way it made me laugh a lot

don’t be bitter/cos im fitter was the only line in the entire production said with a british accent and it fucking slayed me on sight one hit ko

i actually like that they changed “mate, what was i meant to do” to “wait, what was i meant to do” because

it implies that anne had no other train of thought than the one she was on and thats very funny to me

i think it fits w andreas portrayal too

everyone was like, fake crying when anne fake walked down the aisle and it was really funny imo

and as soon as she got to the end anne like, turned, yk?

bro just shut up

the entire audience gasped after that

andrea had actual like, panic on her face

then she led into “i guess he just really liked my head”

and there was a beat after that, where everyone laughed

it was long enough that everyone got the joke

then she mimed the blow job

her riff on “hell”? iconic

“wait, didnt you actually die” no jane she was beheaded but she was fine

abby seymour said dumbass rights she has the Dumbest Bitch energy god

“catherine of aragon had tragically died” catch adrianna looking like, yeah it was so sad for me, how terrible, right?

then boleyn goes off

the. fury, passion, anger, zest, contained in andreas “MASSIVE-”

“over my dead body” andrea gave her this look like, youre damn right it will be

heart of stone

oof

okay so the monologue

oof

“i was lucky. okay, i was really lucky” o o f

“edwina” is still cursed tho

i dont know what it was about this. i dont know if it was abby, or the dialogue, or just it being live but

this made it clear that jane had been Through It

like, this monologue came across (to me at least) as unquestionably a “woman who was abused trying to justify it to herself” kind of situation

“and that’s not because i was scared,” she said, wearing an absolutely terrified expression

this is where she started tearing up i think

okay i gotta take a moment here because

abby was fully crying before the song even started

like somewhere about halfway through her monologue she started tearing up

i was looking for it specifically

i wrote this before the last part so see above

so by the first fucking like of hos you could hear her voice breaking

holy shit ms meuller what the fuck

im not kidding who gave her the right

at the stagedoor she said that after this she was like, “well thats it for my makeup” when someone complimented her song

she is crying. the first chorus and she is actively crying. in the breaks between her lyrics you can hear her crying

abby went high on a couple of notes in here

she riffed on “truthfully” and it was, wow

she didnt go for the whistle tones which was, honestly? the most relatable thing in this entire show

but a couple of the other notes she went high on and they were so killer

there was a second or two of pause after the end where everyone just, absorbed things before the applause

i have some questions for abby about this actually because i dont know if its just because the monologue was different than im used to but

i just want to know if abby meant to have everything come off like That but god

the mental gymnastics jane is doing here are so intense

this performance genuinely changed how i listen to hos forever

i dont think i can ever peacefully listen to this song again

this song gave me so many layered emotions thank u abby mueller

haus of holbein

hans................................. *holbein*

the chaos

i honestly barely remember most of it it was

i had no idea who to be looking at

but i remember it being beautiful

i dont have the words to express how

fucking funny it was

the accents were hilarious

like they werent great german accents, but that made it far better

they were leaning into the ridiculousness of it all

the way abby said “but we cannot guarantee that you’ll still walk at forty” had me on the ground

ive spent the last 24 hrs trying to figure out exactly why it was so funny and i think i got it

she dropped the german accent

and she straight up sounded like she was reading off the side effects of a pharmaceutical ad on tv

the freeze frame? legendary

anna and courtney (im pretty sure?) managed to look so genuinely offended that henry swiped left on them

your highness your highness your highness

god adrianna please

actually every h sound that came out of their mouths

but adrianna Got It

get down

oh god i gotta talk about “didnt live up to his expectations”

brittney like, half took off her jacket and gestured to her body and like, body rolled a bit and honestly? i was fucking dead

the sarcasm really jumped out here. brittney went off in the best way possible

she was fully fake sobbing right before “tragic”

fucking legend

brING me some pheasant!

the woof line is always a good moment but their facial expressions really made it work here

this song has the most outwardly complex choreo (ofc i cant speak to its actual difficulty) and every single one of them crushed it

brittney made eye contact w me again on “looking cute” and im deceased

oh god after “take my fur” she whispered “thank you. honestly” and gestured to herself again and like, i was dying

iirc brittney was like, skipping across the stage or something on “i look more rad” and snapped into position for “lutheranism”

we gotta take a moment to appreciate the operatic talent of that one “get down you dirty rascal” instead of the slo mo

like, ofc the slo mo is a good moment but

brittney went full opera and it was,

wow

shes got a voice on her holy shit

so much talent in such a tiny body

aCHYEAH

she picked the person sitting next to me to dance w her and

they did their cute little dance thing and then brittney gestured like, go sit down, and the person did, then stood back up and started dancing again

not like, in a bad way i dont think

it was super fuckin funny and after the song brittney was like “oh that was cute you think youre funny”

but i heard them talking at the stagedoor and like, brittney was chill it wasnt like a violation of anything

im not explaining it very well but it was really funny in person

everything about her on stage was just, so enrapturing

i dont have too many specific notes about this song because it would probably turn into just, me being gay, which is enough of this already

anyway! get down was good brittney mack is a stellar cleves

her fake crying is next level tho

the confrontation

boleyn, unprompted: i lost my head!

the beheaded cousins high fived after “nice neck” and like, stuck out their necks a bit it was so funny

seymours “i died”

we all know abby is gonna kill her line delivery

but GOD

and then after, she like, realized what she had said and struck a pose like, shit please still think im regal

the line itself was actually pretty, uhhhh, sad

theres something about boleyn roasting khoward in andreas voice

courtney with that “and your songs” had perfect timing

also “when will justice be SERVED” had such good punch to it

after she did that she like

rubbed her hand on janes face

and abby looked SO offended

theres something so, sincere about courtneys delivery of her roasts that i hadnt been getting and its SO much funnier to me

i forget exactly where but at some point boleyn aragon and howard were arguing

and in the background it really looked like seymour and cleves were having a normal conversation and i lost it like. they were just chattin

there were a couple moments of like, cleves and seymour interacting and it was interesting

aywd

courtney! mack! took! no! prisoners!

jesus christ

okay so i dont know if other howards do this or if it was just because i was seeing it live and up close and that made the difference but

for me the most compelling part of this howard was the fear

like yes there was the sadness/anger/etc like there was good emotion but

from the “he says we have a connection” re: henry, and then on, everything about courtneys body language just screamed that she was afraid

idk i might expand on this in a separate post because its a darker topic but yeah. holy shit that was emotional

not a single person clapped after the last line. they all waited until after “yeah, and then i was beheaded” before clapping

like the theater was dead silent. DEAD silent

it was like, so haunting because it was just courtney on stage at that point, with just the white spotlight on her, it was a Moment

im not sure i have the heart right now to get too deep into this

if it would be particularly interesting to anyone feel free to ask, im happy to get more into it but idk its just Emotional

actually this is already so long ima go for it

so on each “we have a connection” it was uhhhh parr and aragon (i think) who each put a hand on like, her clavicle

and for the first two verses she grabbed one of the hands and was like, flirty? ig

but on the one about henry seymour also put a hand around her waist and she like

she freaked out

and listening back to the audio i can

unpopular opinion perhaps but the actual emotion of her on stage didnt come thru in the audio

because it was so physical

like you could see how scared she was

which made it more relateable to me honestly

like she looked so so scared

it was heartbreaking

the confrontation part ii

oh BOOH OO MISTERESSES

“okay catherine, babes” is CUTE fight me

anna looked like, progressively more concerned as that beat went on, and then she just kinda like, deflated? it was really funny tbh

idk her parr feels Different than the parr im used to

during “oh im catherine parr i draw the line in arbitrary places” courtney was playing with her hair it was hashtag cute

BACKING VOCALS RIP CATHY PARR

idnyl

a cute little b flat major 7

yeah anna parr seems

hmm

she seems like she’s just, over henry

like from the start she just has no time for him

idk im Conceptualizing

anna uzele is

her voice is next level

she put survived in the “got married to the king became the one who survived” in air quotes which i think is an interesting note

anna got really physically into the “remember that...” bit of it and everyone in the back was also having a good time with it it was Good

andrea. she stuck her pointer finger between two of her other fingers on her other hand for the “my sixth finger” line and it was SO funny

khoward keeping aragon in line was

not the hot take i was expecting but nevertheless the one we deserved

both for “dissolution of the monasteries” and “well actually”

idk it was a cute character moment

one of *unsure, disgusted, vaguely annoyed* siiiIIIiix

abby was right in front of me and she looked SO uncomf

yeah, i read

iconique

andrea like, threw her head back for this line

the pause after “theres not much we can do about it now” is

painfully long and so so so funny

i was only really looking at brittney but she was like, arms down head up no body language it was SO funny

also her “yeah?” ended my life

she raised the mic up to her mouth while not moving an inch of the rest of her body

the part where they get all meta. has me dead

it was about halfway through this second part that i realized cleves had her coat back. i dont know when that happened. if anyone else knows when exactly anna of cleves gets her coat back after it gets taken off in get down please tell me. i genuinely want to know

this actually distracted me

i got vibes that they genuinely hated henry during this part

first off, mood

secondly, good

annas riffing. god.

she is so talented

dsfjksdf they all straight up left

six

the opening moment is really sweet and kinda funny

abby again killing it with janes cursed lines

courtney howard is actually so cute

when shes not being heartbreakingly sad that is

like her “bye!” was so cute

theyre all so supportive of each other its very cute

megasix

adrianna and abby both looked into my camera and like, i died

at the end anna and brittney were doing some dumb shit as they walked off stage and it was SO cute

after the show

i went to the stagedoor and it was a really fun experience! ive never done that before

it seemed like everyone was being pretty respectful and stuff, thank u six fans for being sane

i got four signatures on my program dklfjsldfjds

abby was such a sweetheart, we actually talked a tiny bit

i told her i loved her line delivery (because uhhhhhh i do) and she said that she tries to get in that comedic timing when she has Those Lines and like yeah

she was seriously the nicest

the ladies in waiting came out as well and everyone cheered for them and lets be real they DESERVE it

lemme sidebar here actually and talk about the ladies in waiting because

they killed it

bessie on the bass was living her best life at literally all times

brittney was also super sweet! i told her she had good energy (because uhhhhhh she does) and she was very nice about it!!!

i didnt really talk to anna or andrea but i got their signatures!

also speaking of my program im still losing my mind over “remembered for: headlessness” and “remembered for: staying alive”

thank u sixcago program

in conclusion! this was such a great+special experience!!! all of the actors were incredible, it was so wonderful

im also not claiming any of this stuff was unique to this performance or to sixcago in general this was just the stuff i noticed as i was watching it. if you clown on this post ill end u

[diveronarpg]

Congratulations, KAITLIN! You’ve been accepted for the role of JULIANA with an FC change to ZOE BARNARD. Admin Rosey: I think we all know how much I treasure Juliana. She’s my little principessa and my heart. Which is why choosing between the applications literally had me sweating because they all represented such distinct aspects of her. But Kaitlin you provided something that I don’t often think of when looking at Juliana: a spine of steel. I thought it was one made of flowery vines, but you’ve convinced me that it is a spine of metal, capable of producing thorns while glinting with jewls. It’s because of this, I have entrusted my daughter to you.. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

Out of Character

Alias | Kaitlin.

Age | 21.

Preferred Pronouns | She/her.

Activity Level | I am currently in Florida on holiday, but usually I spend a great deal of my free time online so I’m around and writing all the time! I won’t be able to much (if at all) while I’m down here since I’m moving my sister into college, but in general I can usually squeeze out a reply every day, though sometime I go a few days without posting and then post 6 replies on a single day, so. Do with that what you will.

Timezone | EST.

Current/Past RP Accounts | This is my most recently used account. This one is from around 6 months ago.

Also; Either I’m blind or I can’t find the additional questions section, but long story short I’d wondered if I could use Zoë Barnard as Juliana’s FC? Thanks babes!! Have a wonderful rest of your day reading and stay hydrated!!! Drink water u beautiful, dehydrated bitches!!!

In Character

Character | Juliet; Juliana Rosetta Capulet.

What drew you to this character? | I’m not exactly sure what caught my eye about Juliana two years ago, I could probably find my old application and try and figure it out again, but without doing so, what first broke my heart were the choice of words bolded, the words that you saw fit to emphasize. The words that make Juliana who she is. Thrive. Ghost. Onlooker. Helplessness. Obsession. Lamented. Saint. Blood. Symbol. Succumbing. Love. These words are a patchwork quilt of heartbreak and home building, of a life simultaneously ruined and still being built.  She is built from ghosts, trying to stand on her own two feet while trying to balance who she was as a girl with who she feels she must now be as a woman. An onlooker to her own life, she’s both in control and out of it, toying with this feeling of helplessness, and wondering if the control she’s taken to get her father’s attention, to get her freedom, is all worth it. She’s a saint with blood in her future, a symbol of love and loss and light, and all the ways the dark threatens those things.

I’ve never favored girls who are put together. Call me a cliché if you like, but my female muses are an assortment of messes, girls who bear their teeth so they might hide their heart without the world realizing, girls who hide behind a string of lovers because they are terrified of love, girls who burn so brightly they threaten to consume–I’ve never been a fan of the sort of muses who are prim and proper and expect the world to lay itself at her feet without even having to ask.

So at first glance, I’m sometimes surprised that I adore Juliana the way that I do. Or at the very least, that I gave her the time of day to sit and think about her. But I did, and boy is she a mess in her Chanel.

(I actually think she favors the likes of Gucci or Dolce & Gabbana, all bold prints and daring colors with crisp lines, but that’s besides the point).

At first glance, Juliana is every inch the perfect princess that one might expect from Juliet, at least the Juliet from the beginning of the play. As a child she is spoiled, both with material objects and with love. But she was young when her mother died, and for all that her father loved his daughter, he employed his grief tenfold when it came to protecting her. He caged her away, kept her hidden and protected and I think in many ways, this has ruined her.

Juliana is a collection of fatal flaws.

Her love for her father, her desperate, unending love for him, has made her unable to fully recognize that the darkness she was afraid might taint him has already dragged him down. Not even that it dragged him down, that rather he stepped into the abyss without so much as a look back to check on his daughter. She loves her cousin, her darling Tibby, who is cruel and violent and knew the taste of ruin before he’d learned how to walk, who spit on the Montague name before he’d even heard that he was supposed to–she loves him, with a fervor equal to that anger which he directs at the world. The Tiger of Verona, they call him, but she still sees the boy who rode his bike behind her down to the river, groaning and grumbling the whole way, but protecting her all the same. She loves all her people, would die for each and every one of them if there was a call to action that required such a sacrifice.

But love and loyalty are not her only sins–that same father that built her a gilded cage taught her pride, taught her to believe in herself even when he didn’t speak to her. Even when she felt like she wasn’t enough for him, her pride turned itself into a deadly thing. Double edged and sharp as the tip of a blade, her pride is simultaneously unshakeable and unfound. A creature that thrives on attention and love, she can sometimes crumble into herself with a lack of it.

She is loyal, and it has made her blind. She’s been put on a pedestal and it’s made her pride deadly, a corrosive thing that threatens to turn her blood from ichor to mere iron. She is curious, and it is going to put her 10 feet under.

She is an innocent in a world where innocence does not fare well.

I’m curious to see which hamartia, if any of them, will prove her downfall. After all, the best fatal flaws are the ones that are good in moderation. Loyalty with clarity of vision. Pride without hubris. Curiosity with care.

In Juliana, there’s something tragic. In Juliana, there is something magic. And that’s the kind of character any writer would be fascinated with, at least in my book.

Does she have the ability to find balance? Here’s hoping.

(Or not–we need to keep things interesting, after all).

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? | For starters, I think Juliana is one of those wonderful characters that’s caught in an in-between. She’s in a transitory stage, with her fate hanging so precariously in the balance. She’s been afforded the opportunity to break from the chains of her innocence, but she’s also beginning to wonder if perhaps her lily-white hands were not so much a chain but a blessing. And she is wondering that about a great deal of her life, and I am watching and wondering myself which branch of her fate she will choose to walk down.

Here are some paths for her to choose, though I am certainly someone who thrives better when I have other characters to plot with.

(Which, coincidentally, will be another interesting concept to consider with Juliana. Lovely, lonely Juliana, who has been caged and sheltered and only recently brought into the fold of violence that bedecks her father’s hallowed halls, does not know so intimately the men who populate her father’s ranks. She is not overly privy to their personalities, and she is less than friends with a great deal of them. They respect her, to a degree, being the boss’s daughter they must, but she does not know them. She is coming to, slowly but surely understanding her people, and I’m interested to see how someone so isolated will fare in this sea of people).

Okay, tangents aside, some plots. (Sidenote: These are all fairly independent, and some can happen simultaneously where others are branches that, once started down, mean she wouldn’t be able to go down others. It really depends on fellow muns).

FOR KING & COUNTRY. One of Juliana’s guiding lights has always been fidelity, almost as much as love has been; for those whom she loves are those who inspire loyalty within her. It’s said right there in her biography, that she adhered to the commandments her father set forth the way any disciple ought to. It’s a hard line to draw though, where she ought to direct her loyalty and her love. I think this is one of the things about Juliana that appeals to me, that she is such a slave to her love, and at the moment her love for her father and for her country are in line. At the moment, she believes that her father is leading their people the way he ought to (or, at the very least, the best and only way he knows how), and that the blood and ichor spilled are ruinous but have not ruined them yet. But what happens when she reaches that limit? What happens if she comes to the conclusion that Verona is ruled by a gilded elite, one that needs to spill the blood of those lower than them just so she might continue to sit upon a poisoned throne? What happens when a king is not ruling the country, but killing it? What, pray tell, is a princess to do then?

THERE WILL BE BLOOD. Juliana has let the iron into her soul, has tasted darkness and been left hungry; there’s no doubt about that any longer. She shadows the Great Cosimo Capulet, striding through the halls of the Cathedral, and she finds herself intimately familiar with the coppery taste of air tainted by spilled blood, knows what it is to feel the buck of a glock 19 in her hands, and yet. Juliana is bedecked in innocence painted red, a tender-hearted girl with violence at her fingertips, but for all that the violence has been exposed to her, so has her father. It’s a hard thing, reconciling the man who once tucked her into bed at night, a soft kiss pressed to her temple, with the man whispered about among the masses. And those whispers? They speak of the death of innocence. They speak of the cold-blooded, hard-hearted murder of an underboss across the bridge. They speak of a son taking his place as leader of the family too soon and a daughter with pearls in her eyes and kindness woven with steel in her spine. They speak of an unjust loss, and they say it was her father who dared pull the trigger, if not by his own hand then by his order. Juliana is under no illusions; she sees the darkness in her father, sees it leaking into her own heart and threatening to turn her body towards rot, but to think of her father as someone who would underhandedly cross the border into Montague territory to have Alvise Vernon murdered is different from recognizing her father as someone engaged in a battle for power, as someone who kills those who dare cross the Castelvecchio into Capulet territory. She’s not sure though either way if the whispers are true, and that scares her.

ROMAN HOLIDAY. I find the potential connection between Roman and Juliana quite fascinating. You may call me a cliche all that you like, but it’s not even a romantic connection that I seek between the two. It’s a strange thing, but I honestly couldn’t care less about romance when it comes to Juliana’s future–if anything, I’d prefer to see her learn how to love herself, darkness and all, before she falls in love. But quick tangent aside, Roman and Juliana have been left broken and wanting in their lives, and then were taught to fill the void in completely different ways. Both, though, still have that ache sitting in their chest, turning their hearts towards ruin. Roman turned his towards the mob, allowed the wild, brutal thing to be equally as brutal in its hurt as it was in its nobility, as it was in its power. Juliana wasn’t afforded that same freedom, and instead of turning her heart to steel it turned itself to gold, soft and pliable and equally as loyal. Equally, she burned. Their loss turned them honor-bound, turned them fervent, turned them holy. I’m not sure exactly how they might come together (imagine: they meet, masks drawn, in the flashing lights of the Tempest lounge, each knowing exactly who they other is but wanting just for a moment to pretend they don’t), but I can’t help but think about the ways in which Roman might change Juliana–most of them entirely for the better. Roman is someone who has always known his fate, born into glory and taught how to harness it, and I think he could do a great deal to teach Juliana how to lead her people. He is wracked with his own grief, a grief that could fill him with prejudice against her simply for the sake of her name, but if they were to overcome their differences, the pair of them together could turn Juliana into the kind of woman she could only dream of being: daunting, exceptional, inspiring. Apart they are formidable, even if many can’t see that in Juliana yet. Together they threaten to raze Verona to ash and build her back into something golden.

THE LADY VANISHES. Another potential path would be Juliana falls into the iron, consumed by that which she vowed to protect her father from. In some ways, Juliana has traded in one golden cage for another made of silver and bronze, of tougher and more formidable things. Before her father brought her into the fold, she lived a lonely life, to be sure, but it was also lovely and left her sun-haloed and her blood tasting of honey. She attended private school and came home after classes were over, lounging in the backyard gardens, a book by Emily Brontë or some other romanticist cracked open and a bowl of peaches (or cherries or apricots or whatever else she could have possibly desired) on the table next to her. She’d sit before her canvas in a linen shirt and nothing else, paint streaked across the canvas and her cheeks while she poured her heart into the brush strokes. She’d sit at the dinner table with her father and smile and laugh and tell him about her day until he’d quietly excuse herself. Eventually she’d go on to expect it, this quiet departure, and eventually she’d stop minding the quiet. Yes, she led a quiet life, one full of care and peace, and she didn’t mind so much until Vivianne convinced her father to pull her from her cage for a night and show her all of the darkness that she’d been missing. And with the dark came the love of the moon, and the stars, and the cosmos gave Juliana the same love that the sun had formerly shown her. It’s intoxicating, the darkness, the flecks of light that dance across the sky as an evening wears on, the atrocities that men and women will commit in her name, the ones that taste uncomfortably like a drug she never intended to get addicted to. What if she were to give in? I think it’d be a fascinating thing, to see Juliana fall.

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE. It’s no small secret, Juliana’s innocence. It shapes her every breath, lets each and every member of both mobs form their own opinions about who she is and what she is capable of–all without ever actually meeting her. Boss’s daughter, the delicate flower, the soldiers sometimes whisper when she enters a room. She is the blessed daughter, no matter the grime that’s started to taint her manicure, no matter the blood she spills on her Manolo Blahniks. I’d be curious to see how this innocence of hers fares, and whether or not it will lead to her untimely end. I think this is possibly the least likely of my plot ideas; I find it hard to believe that the prodigal daughter would allow herself to be chained to her innocence, no matter how much she might resent the darkness, but it could be an interesting thought to consider, this kind of oxymoronic concept of fatal innocence. She’s let the darkness is, but will the light burn it from her soul, taking her body down with it? Time will tell.

LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON. There’s something terribly haunting about Juliana being forced into a marriage for which she has no passion, into a relationship with a man whom she… respects? Priam Taravella is an honorable man, and she is fiercely loyal and guilty in her innocence, and she would never want to intentionally go out of her way to make a move against this union arranged for her by her father, but this is Juliana. Juliana, who would die for love. Juliana, who would die just to be in love, for some fleeting moment where she could taste love’s tender kiss, for a shared night with a lover who put their mouth to her collarbone and whispered her a new religion. She wants someone to stare into her eyes and show her what it is to go mad for love. Juliana, she loves and she loves and she loves and she has so few directions to direct her love. She has her father, and she has her cousins, and she has her Vivianne, but none are the love she so desperately might desire. The love she so earnestly deserves. It’s no small thing that the last line of her bio is “Icarus and the sun? That was love.” That is what Juliana seeks in life–a love that is all consuming, a love that threatens to burn, a love that she’d be willing to cast the world into flame just to get a taste of. Priam Taravella might be a partner, a brother in arms in this war that she doesn’t want to be fighting, but he’s no sun, and she doesn’t turn to Icarus when he comes near. I want so desperately for her to say this, to speak out against her arranged marriage, to step into the ranks of the Capulets and come out stronger, with a louder voice and with hands that no longer shake, and be unashamed of her hungry heart. She’s a girl born to a bloodied throne–should she not be worthy of it herself? Should she not have a mate to match her hunger?

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Always. I’m so that bitch.

In Depth

In-Character Interview:

What is your favorite place in Verona?

She knows what she would have said, once upon a dream.

She thinks of the before, when the sunlight tasted like honey and her smile was effortless. When she could walk through the garden behind their villa and not remember the sight of a dark haired woman sitting on the stone bench beneath the olive tree there, spine cracked and a smile on her face as Emma Woodhouse did something to make her laugh. When she spent each summer biking outside of her hometown to the small lake just south of the city, Tibby trailing along behind her at the request of his father. We can’t let the princess get lost, she can still remember him saying, the echo of a mother’s soft laughter still ringing in her head.

She remembers slipping through massive dark wood doors, her little sister in tow, shutting the heavy thing behind her and standing among all of the things that made her mother who she was. A baby-faced Juliana, pulling open drawers and running small hands over the fine silks there, or slipping into the wardrobe at the back of the room where all of her mother’s biggest, warmest coats hung up. She’d bury herself on the floor there and whisper stories to Siena, tall tales of romance and intrigue that she’s read about in the novels she’d found among her mother’s things. She remembers putting on a pair of velvet red stilettos, six sizes too big for her adolescent feet, and wrapping a silken scarf around her slender neck, giggling and laughing as her dark-haired counterpart donned a wide-brimmed hat she’d only seen her mother wear once.

But that life feels like a dream now.

A life lived, surely, but not by Juliana. Not as the woman she is today.

Instead, she thinks of the places she loves now, the places that are privy to the woman she’s becoming rather than the one she’s been forced to leave behind. She thinks of the cathedral and every moment where her father has looked upon her with newfound approval, but must then also think of the blood she knows has been spilt there, the ichor she can’t see but knows is under her cousins fingernails. She thinks of her bedroom, the bed with the white linen bedspread she insisted on even though her father said he’d buy her a silk set, the window with the bench below it where she likes to sit and read the stories her mother once told her before putting her to bed. She thinks of the abandoned easel in the corner of the room, paint dried and the image only half-completed. We learn to love our cages, they say.  

She thinks of the Castelvecchio, and the many times she’s sat on the edge of the bridge and stared into the sunset, the colors of the sky daring her to pick up a paintbrush she put down two years ago. But if she must think of the bridge then she must also think of the crimes that have befallen both sides of this conflict that has left the two families broken and wanting.

And then, she thinks of the inbetween.

“The Twelfth Night,” she says suddenly, as though pulled from a trance. “I’ve always loved art, though it wasn’t until recently that I spent much time there.”

How embarrassing, she thinks. Vivianne taught me better; never let them see you blink.

“They have a Rembrandt that just–” she pauses for a moment, inhaling deeply and shaking her head, the image coming to the forefront of her mind. “It’s just absolutely phenomenal. Have you ever been? Their Baroque collection is simply to die for. They have a Velásquez that I promise will steal the breath right out from your throat.”

She pauses, another half beat of her heart where she remembers a cage she sometimes wishes she wasn’t free of.

“Then again, of course, his best works are in Spain. Las Meninas is at the Museo del Prado, if I’m not mistaken.” She’s not, but she knows better than to be impolite. So she smiles, and goes on, her eyes mischievous when she continues, as though she’s letting him in on a secret.

(She pretends she doesn’t feel a pang in her heart when she mentions Spain. When she thinks of a summer spent walking through Madrid while she and her mother visit her aunt, the air warm and full of music that makes her heart sing. When she thinks of a freedom she never got to taste again).

“Everyone always expects me to favor florals, you know. When I say I love art, they expect me to love the impressionists, to say that Renoir and Monet are who I’d lay my heart bare for, or that Degas Dancers in Blue hangs over my bed, but they’re wrong. It’s not that they aren’t beautiful, of course they are, but stand in front of a Rembrandt or a Velásquez for half an hour and it’s just… it’s transcendent. It’s real, but it’s also more than. Monet is beautiful, but Rembrandt…”

She shakes her head again, her chest heavy.

“Rembrandt is sublime.”

What does your typical day look like?

She can’t help it when she lets out a laugh, her eyes glinting like sunlight on the water. She doesn’t blame her interviewer when the breath catches in his throat.

“Is this the part where I demurely evade the question? Bat my lashes and act like my days are top secret?” She is all soft lines when she leans forward in the plush velvet armchair, shoulders curling in on themselves while she twists her mouth into a smile. “None of my days are typical,” she purrs in mock amusement.

He responds, says something he probably thinks is witty. Juliana smiles, but she’s not really listening to him and for a moment her heart isn’t in it.

The truth is that her days scare her sometimes, and sometimes they make her heart sing, and she’s not sure exactly which is worse anymore, or what causes which reaction on what occasion. There are days where the thought of leaving her bedroom terrifies her, where the thought of walking through the streets of Verona will mean having Tiberius at her heels, eyes and teeth hungry for spilt blood. Days where she’s not sure if she hates him or loves him more for it in equal measure. You don’t hate him, she thinks quickly. You hate what this city’s done to him. (She knows better, knows that violence is embedded in her cousin’s heart, the same way she knows the darkness was always in her fathers and it was simply grief that brought it forth–she lies to herself all the same). Then there are days where staying in her cage seems equally as dangerous, equally as terrifying. What was she missing, out there in the world? A world where all was not sunlight and starry nights? The days where her father bids her stay in the house she will stare at the half-finished canvas in her bedroom and wonder–those haunt her the same way her days at the Cathedral do.

She’s caught somewhere in the middle of them, these two lives of hers, and the more time she spends in the in-between the more she begins to see that the pair of them are both light and dark. That they are cages in equal measure, and she loves them both.

(And what, pray tell, would be better to die for? One could say she’s caught between a rock and a hard place, her gilded cage and her blood-soaked title, but she’d call herself lucky, to have a life so full of love, practically brimming over the edge with it).

“It’s changed, recently,” she finally says in response to whatever it was he had said last. “My definition of typical.”

She purses her lips just so, pausing only the bat of an eye before deciding what she may actually be able to tell her companion.

“I used to wake when I pleased, but I’ve begun rising with the sun. I desperately need an espresso in the mornings though–you really don’t want to meet me early morning if I haven’t had a healthy dose of caffeine. I wish I were someone who enjoyed running. They say it’s a good thing to do in the mornings, a way to kickstart your day. Do you run?” Her companion shakes his head, but she’s not convinced he’s really listening to her. His mouth is parted and his eyes are trained on her full mouth; it makes her smile. “No? Well, I wish I did. Perhaps we ought to take it up together. Be each other’s motivators.”

A half-pause. Another moment for her to bask in his staring. She’d always fared well with attention.

“Sometimes I have errands to run, for my father or otherwise. More often lately it’s been something for him, but I can’t always be sure there’s something he wants for me to do, so I’m not sure I’d call it typical.” Her mouth twists, half smile half grimace, as though she must be apologetic for not having a more direct answer. “Someone once told me that each plan is a house of cards, and when a single variable shifts, the whole thing comes tumbling down. I suppose that’s the approach I take when planning my days, what I must consider on any given week, that having a plan for my ‘typical day’ will always falter, that the unpredictability is what’s most predictable now.”

What has been your biggest mistake thus far?

For a half second, just a single moment, she nearly says the unthinkable.

It comes like the whip of leather, a shock lash through her system that she can’t deny, the kind of insecurity she’s never allowed herself to so much as feel, much less voice aloud to a near stranger, no matter how delicious his gaze had made her feel a moment before. I thought I would be enough. It’s a dangerous thought; not exactly sacrilegious, but something close. Something equally as desperate, something equally as ruinous. She’d remember, through no will of her own, the moments between cage and what she’d thought would be freedom, the night where her father announced to her over dinner that he’d like for her to start shadowing him.

(Shadowing. It was a funny word. A dark word for dark work.)

Nonetheless, she took her sun-hungry bones and turned herself into a half-moon girl, a goddess who could live in both the light and the dark of the world, and she’d done it all for the love of a father, for a love she’d been nearly bereft of for years. She’d tasted it in doses, in gifts left out for her the morning after a dinner spent alone, a pair of diamond earrings here or that pair of Gucci loafers she’d been eyeing there. She’d thought, somehow, desperately, inevitably, that this darkness she’d let into her soul would turn her into a girl her father might finally pay genuine attention to, no matter how that darkness might terrify her. We’re all drawn to that which scares us, Vivianne had said to her once, on a dark night with storm clouds on the horizon. Juliana had opened her windows to the rain, had leaned on her casement ledge and wanted in a strange and hungry way to stick her hand out the window, better still to rush through her backyard directly into the thunder and lightning. We feel safest when we know our fears, just as we do when we know our enemies. And if the darkness did bury itself in her heart, then she might know it, might better understand it, might use that darkness to show her father the dangers of such a thing. She would show him that it would suck her in like a drug and spit her back out just as rotten, just as ruined.

For her father, for her family, this was a weight she could bear.

This loss of light.

She should have known that to know the darkness would teach her to love it. Hadn’t that been what Vivianne was trying to tell her? That fears could intoxicate? She’d watched her father fall into the dark violence of the mob for years, sat alone at home in her bathrobe until late in the evenings, staying up until all hours for her father to finally come through their front door. She’d scurry up the steps to her bedroom before he could see her, but she saw it all the same—that way he loved the darkness, that way he welcomed it into his bones with arms open. She should have known; she thought she was conquering the darkness, but it had every ability to conquer her, too.

But she knows beyond doubt that she can say no such thing, that to admit weakness would go against everything that her father and his merry band of murdering men had taught her, and none would ever respect her if she answered as such. But she’s never been very good with dishonesty, and so when she speaks it’s an uncomfortable truth, but a truth all the same.

“Thinking myself invulnerable.”

She will offer no insight, no further explanation to this boy’s question.

What has been the most difficult task asked of you?

It surprises Juliana, the fact that she knows the answer to her companion’s question without much thought.

My name, she wants to say. For my name I may bear the world.

Instead she gives a soft hum, her head tilting to the side slightly while her eyes cast their gaze downwards. There’s a soft smile playing on her cheeks when she studies the lines formed by dark wood on the floor beneath her chair. When the boy had called and asked if they might conduct this little interview in the comfort of her own home, she’d at first been hesitant. The walls of the Capulet villa were hallowed if not hollowed, a private place, a place she’d once been caged and could be again. She couldn’t imagine her father would be pleased she’d allowed a near stranger into their home, but allowed it she had, and she couldn’t be more glad for the comforts of home.

On the mantle above the fireplace she sees a photo of her and her mother, Juliana looking like she was ten, perhaps twelve. There’s a book open on her mother’s lap, and neither seems to notice the camera trained on their moment. Beside the antique lamp on the side table, there’s a photo of Juliana and Siena, faces cracked wide by smiles. Just there, on the frame of the door leading outside, she can still see the scorch mark left behind from a lifetime ago, when she’d sat in the open doorway with Siena while lightning crackled outside, a candle flickering in the early night while the rain beat down on the patio and splashed up onto their outstretched toes. If she’d done this in a coffee shop, like she’d originally wanted, or in the park that overlooked the Adige, she thinks she wouldn’t have been so… real, neither with her interviewer nor with herself. Here her ghosts would keep her honest.

Lips of a rose and a gaze like sunshine, it shouldn’t be a surprise when it’s her title that is her greatest hardship.

The things we love hurt us the most.

“Do you know the story of Peter Pan?” Juliana asks the boy across the coffee table, lifting her gaze from the floor. Her eyes are steady and her hands don’t shake, but she almost wishes that they would, that she would feel some discomfort at the possibility of bearing such weight, at bearing such self-awareness.

“Sure,” he responds, brow furrowed in obvious confusion. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Well, sometimes I can’t help but think myself Tinkerbell,” she goes on, a laugh threatening to bubble from her throat. She’d never actually voiced this thought of hers, this strange connection to a fictional fairy that she feels. She hopes he might understand. “At the very end of the novel, Peter can’t remember her, but we know that she died–she isn’t even afforded a death scene, you know? And she dies because people ceased to believe in her.”

She can see the boy’s confusion still plain as day, oblivious to how she might relate.

She laughs finally, a high and lovely thing, but she understands. She doesn’t quite understand it herself yet.

“I think what I relate to, or at least what I’m scared of most, is that I’m like her, that I’m going to… run the business and no one will believe in me, no one will want to follow me, and I’ll be destined to fail because of it, all before I’ve even really begun.”

What are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues?

“My thoughts?” She begins, eyes wide and carefully curious. Somehow she cannot deny her amusement.

The arch of her eyebrows rise up, all of her edges turned to sharp and her hair on end. She should have expected the question, surely, but a part of her hadn’t thought this milky soft boy bold enough to cross such lines.

She keeps her heartbeat level and her eyebrows raised, a kind of careful nonchalance.

Her thoughts flash though, for a moment, to all of those many people that this war threatens to ruin, for a moment to all of the many people that Juliana wants to save, wants to love. She thinks of brutal-hearted Rafaella and the girl she had been when she walked into the Capulet daughter life, thinks of all the ways that she loves her newest family, thinks of the cruel words she’s heard were spit at the girls shoulders and how she came out the other side stronger. She thinks of Donatello’s masterpieces and knows her cousin to be something more, something better, something wonderful. She thinks of all her soldiers, those souls who have pledged themselves at her family’s feet, the hands and hearts that will one day be her responsibility, the hungry hands and hearts that she will need to feed. She loves Verona though, and who could blame her when it is not just her soldiers that she considers, her soldiers that she wishes to love. She thinks of a boy across the bridge, with the weight of a world on his shoulders, and the daughter bereft of a father.

She thinks of a man with two children, a body decaying as it lies in a red pool of its own making.

Mutually assured destruction, is her first instinct.

Instead, she responds with a question.

“You know that phrase–’the things we do for love’?” She looking at the photo of her mother and father on the fireplace mantle, can’t help it when her brows draw together slightly. Slowly, she draws a breath and brings her gaze down from the mantle, making sure hazel eyes been blue. “The things we do for war.”

The honey-haired boy across the way looks at her with a question clear in his light eyes.

She supposes not everyone can see the way love and war intertwine.

“I think it’s about time it came to an end.”

Extras:

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Mockblog

An unorganized collection of headcanons–some of them from my perspective, some flashes of Juliana’s memory, some otherwise.

i. She is not an early riser by nature, but she’s made herself one by design. While she was still caged, she’d sleep away the morning, slip off her eye mask at near mid-day and stretch herself awake. Since she’s joined her father, she’s changed her habits. She’ll slip out her back door to sip at a cup of espresso while the sun leaks purple and pink all over the horizon, bleeds an orange so bright that sometimes she just wants to reach out into the sky and lick it.

ii. She had given herself to God once, but somewhere along the way it was like religion just slipped out of her pocket. She remembers the nights after her mother and Siena died, remembers the way she tried to crawl into the heart of that darkness to find her belief in Him, but she was met with only shadows; most days she’s okay with that, but sometimes in the dead of night, with nothing there but the darkness, she craves the light that she abandoned. Sometimes, she thinks that maybe she’s better off, that maybe there are pieces to her God that are better off left forgotten. She thinks, if she is to go back to God, then she’d like to go back to Emmanuel, the name some give Jesus at Christmastime. God with us, it says, and it’s a light in the darkness. A beacon of hope. God is with us, in us, always. In things big and small, in our hopes and our dreams, the people that we love. Some days it’s easier to think about someone in the cosmos making the decisions, that idea she would always have a destiny set forth, but for a girl whose blood pumps for love, it’s not hard to imagine that it’s those she loves who set her fate.

iii. You wet your pointer finger and run it around the rim of a crystal glass. It’s like angels, you whisper. Your mother smiles.

iv. Vivianne is staring at a slammed door when it truly hits her. You can never be her, Juliana had hissed, tears in her eyes and fists clenched at her side. It’s then that Vivianne realizes Juliana is glass and steel woven together, and she can’t tell anymore if she’s looking at courage emerging from the fragile, or the vulnerable giving way to strength.

v. She looks at her hands sometimes and sees doll parts, porcelain hands attached to marionette strings.

(She should know better, really. Doesn’t she know what dolls always do in the movies? They come to life. And come to life Juliana will.)

vi. She is an unexpected academic, not for want of knowledge particularly, but more for the sheer fact that a quiet life left her with a great deal of free time on her hands. She filled her time with other things, to be sure, painted a canvas the colors of sunset, read novels that made her heart sing in wonder and light, but she is fourteen when her mother dies and school is finally starting to get interesting when it happens. So, she gives herself to it. Languages don’t come naturally, but she spends hours studying tenses and spelling and starts watching Spanish telenovelas to teach herself. When she learns that, she moves onto harder languages like Russian, all harsh and brass noise but beautiful in it’s savagery. She teaches herself to slip between tongues the way others change their tops, letting Spanish roll of her tongue one moment and French in the next breath. She finds history fascinating, how empires rise and fall, and her bedroom is littered with stacks of books with notes in the margins, and The Art of War sits atop her collection of Brontë novels.

vii. She opens every window that she can. I need to be able to breathe, she’ll say when she casts the windows wide during a thunderstorm.

viii. Things go back to normal.

(Read: Juliana continues reading, continues sitting her mother’s closet and touching clothes that still smell of her mother’s perfume. Read: Cosimo bedecks his elder daughter in gifts, and spends all his waking hours (in truth, he sees her in his sleep as well) worrying about how he’s possibly going to keep her safe. Read: Juliana eats peaches in the fading afternoon light and they still taste like sunshine.)

Things don’t really go back to normal.

(Read: Juliana wakes up in a cold sweat for 6 months straight, an image of milky skin turned sour, purple shadows beneath tired eyes. Read: Cosimo’s gifts his daughter the Tower of Babel and teaches her that she is a saint, that she needs to be protected, that a caged bird is a safe bird. Read: Juliana doesn’t ever want to touch silk again.)

Things go back to normal.

ix. She is not a child, but she is childlike in her wonder, and sometimes her train of thought or her actions can reveal as such. She will hold a particular attachment to her objects, will wonder aloud about something that most people wouldn’t think to question, and has a peculiar preference for human contact that some people can find uncomfortable. She is tactile, still, in nature. Like a child reaches out to touch everything so as to understand, Juliana crosses barriers often and without much thought. She will give hugs in situations where they may not be warranted, touch forearms during conversations, put her hand on a person’s shoulder when she comes up quietly behind them. She will tuck a strand of hair behind a stranger’s ear if they allow her, put her palm to a friend’s cheek when they are in distress.

x. She cannot drink too much champagne, anything more than half a glass really and her stomach will roll–she thinks about the one and only time she stole from her father’s liquor cabinet, a rosy-lipped and doe-eyed little girl trying to impress her golden-haired counterpart. They’d both downed an entire bottle each and then spent the rest of the evening puking in Juliana’s bathroom, but the next morning her house had been quiet and empty and no one ever noticed.

xi. There has been more than one occasion where she was discovered on her casement ledge, sitting precariously on the edge, feet dangling free a bedroom window where the scent of an apricot tree lingers in the air, drifting up from the garden below.

xii. Juliana has exactly four weapons in her current arsenal, though she’s been considering expanding recently, perhaps going to Lucrezia for some training in other methods. The first is a Glock-19 that she was given about a year ago, which feels weighty and foreign in her hands. The second is a balisong, which scares her and exhilarates her in the same breath. Spinning it between her fingers, it looks like dancing. The third is an antique revolver, which while impractical for it’s less accurate, is her favorite. It has a marbled handle and along the metals are intricate etching that make the piece look more like a work of art than a weapon. Her father gave it to her for her 21st birthday. The last is the one that scares her the most: her smile.

[auraphantom]

The darkstache fic that somehow contains more Bing than darkstache

So i finished my first fan fic ever today! Here is the summary:

Ao3 link

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Whovianofmidgard: If there is ice cream, there is dark! conclusion: ice cream = Dark Auraphantom: I accept!

Aka the darkstache fic that somehow ended with Bing more in the focus than darkstache.

Ps: Sorry Bing

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Dark has called together an unexpected emergency meeting. Nothing about that sounded good. All the egos who gathered around the table waited with immense tension what the meaning of this meeting would be, the silence almost deafening, or maybe it was just the constant high pitch sound emanating from Dark's being. The only ones unfazed by the atmosphere were the Host, with his soft drone of narrations, and Wilford. Let's face it, good ol' bubblegum boy over here wouldn't pick up on a cold tense air even if it slapped him in the face... good for him though. Dark himself slowly looked about at the faces present, a mask of collected authority shown prominently on his expression only to occasionally crack away from his shell with an unmistakable simmering rage hiding behind of it all. After what felt like an excruciating few seconds he smoothed out his suit jacket in preparation to address the others and even before he said a word one of the Jims flinched at the motion, the poor soul already jumpy in anticipation of the worst. 

"Let's get straight to the point shall we? It has come to my attention that there has been some… tampering with our fundings." He said, his tone dangerously cool. "Would anyone care to explain?" The entity stood and placed his hands on the conference table, leaning on them, his figure somehow growing more imposing. "Now!" The others with a more sensitive heart cowered a bit at that last growl of order. However it didn't have the desired effect since everyone remained silent. With a scowl Dark pushed back up from the table to standing straight and willed himself to tone down his aggressive approach. Fear and intimidation as useful they can be is not always the way. He needs them on his side, to open up willingly. A calmer procedure is in order. "Google. What is the exact loss we've suffered?" He turned towards the android, starting to pace with slow, calculated steps. The red and blue colors of his aura slightly flickered at the word 'suffer'. "Calculating." Google pulled up a holographic screen in search. "The total of loss is 352 000$. ...Something doesn't add up..." "Oh poop, who even cares!" Wilford burst out, the message of him being clearly bored by all the official work jargon apparent in his attempt at balancing a pen on his finger. When it just fell on the table with a dull clang the pink ego just leaned in with his full body in the direction of Dark in an exaggerated show of giving his attention to him. "The number of the money is so boring. I betcha the answer of where that money ran off to is more exciting, don't ya think?" Dark spared a glance at Wilford which was less irritated than any look he would give to anyone else, and mulled over his old friend's words. "Agreed." With a deep sigh Dark sat back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose, mumbling. "What even happened with that much money..." Bing raised his hand, meekly, like a middle schooler. It took several moments for Dark and to the others to notice and a few more till everyone’s gaze was on him finally. A deep silence fell on the room as everybody waited for him to start speaking. It was rare from Bing to take part in a meeting due to his low popularity and Google being able to do everything that he ever could and more. But an emergency meeting is an emergency meeting and no ego was an exception from that. Still... Due to the rarity of an event like this, once in Bing's existence he had everyone's attention. Except for Google. But Google can multitask fairly well, there is four of him after all. "I might know what happened to the funds..." That got Google's attention too and now he was glaring at him. "What. Do. You. Know?"  Yikes. Dark's shell violently cracked, painting the room in hues of red and blue for split a second. Every ego in the room except Wilford seemed to flinch at that and scooted their chairs just a bit farther away from both Bing and Dark. Nobody likes to be near the splash zone. "Someone might have wanted to buy a cool motorbike-" Bing stated shyly. "- and someone might have made a few mis-clicks and..." "B i n g." "TheEgoIncMightBeTheProudOwnerOf-200 472-NewVespas" Finished Bing as fast as he could then promptly tried to slide down his chair and hide under the table, but he did not dare to disappear fully so his head poked out. A distant whistle could be heard, surprisingly from camera Jim and a really soft "Hot dam!" From mini Bing, who was put on a nearby shelf otherwise he wouldn't have seen anything. Dark's jaw slightly dropped. Any other time such a feat would have been considered impressive by all the egos, even by Wilford who was infamous of achieving it on several occasions, but this time it distressed all of them greatly. Google's face however turned from his scowl to confusion, he turned his head away for a second, mouth moving silently as he was running some calculations. "Wait... That still doesn't add up... " He looked back to the table with a serious face of concern. "That would have cost approximately 801 888 000.2$, way more than 352 000$!” While he was talking Dark's ringing slowly started to rise in volume, but Google continued. "That cost goes way beyond all of the Ego Inc's fundings, with a bill like that it would mean we are either bankrupt or in debt! And there is a monthly limit for how much each of us can spend at once, how did you even got around that?!" "Well-" Before Bing could even finish whatever he was trying to say, that would have probably made his situation worse anyway, an audible crack echoed through the whole meeting room, making everyone flinch. Meanwhile the ringing Dark emitted got  significantly louder, almost enough to hurt someone's ears. Everybody turned towards the head of the table, where it seemed Dark had stood up without them noticing. His shell was cracking violently every second and his aura more or less swallowed his end of the room. He seemed to shake slightly while clawing the table a bit and staring at nothing. "Dark, darling." Leaning a bit more in, Willford tried to speak up and draw Dark's attention towards him. It proved to be unsuccessful. With slightly wide eyes, he turned his attention towards Bing yet again and spoke. "   B i n g.   D i d   y o u   i n d e b t e d   u s?   " "B-bingo..." Whatever come over the android to make this joke has clearly done it now. A quiet "Ah, Bully!" could be heard from Wilford before the long table broke in half under Dark's power, that now has quickly eaten more and more of the room.

Panic overcame everyone as all hell broke loose. The Jims, in their frightened state, leapt over from their side over the broken table, knocking that piece over with them as they scurried towards the only exit, but they didn't get too far before they fell over one-another. Bim in his surprise only managed to kick his office chair away from Dark, then after a few meters he tumbled to the ground near the wall. Dr. Iplier grabbed The Host's arm and tried to drag him away but they fell over and tried to crawl away instead. Silver and Ed tried to run and hide behind the knocked over half of the broken table. Even Google was on his feet quick but only got to the corner of the room where he started analysing his chances of survival. "-And Wilford was nowhere to be seen." Narrated the Host quietly beside Dr. Iplier who was also looking for a way out now. Dark slowly, oh so slowly, started taking steps towards Bing's direction, his aura completely off the handle, ringing numbing out any other sound that could ever be heard, the colors bleeding to grey and static towards the center, near impossible now to see Dark's figure if it weren't for the spazzing red and blue outlines of his, the only two colors that could be seen now. 'This is it.' Thought Bing probably as the demon was making is way to him. 'This is how i die.' He would have felt like he was looking death right in the eyes, if only he wouldn't have notice some pale yellow and cotton candy pink moving in his periferia. That is sure as hell an attention grabber in an almost completely black and grey room. Somehow Wilford - obnoxious, loud, ostentatious, some would say; annoying, overexcitable, trigger happy, overly cheery, unpredictable menace, lunatic - Warfstache, somehow managed to sneak past Dark and get behind him, and he was holding a bucket of chocolate ice cream in one hand and a spoon in the other? 'What?...' And if it weren't already weird enough, it got weirder. He lunged at Dark. To describe the noise, that came out of Dark's mouth upon impact, as a scream would be really underselling the sound that cracked the windows, and almost made everybody's eardrum burst and bleed.

His form visibly bent in an attempt to hold up Wilford’s sudden weight on him, an audible, sickening crack followed that visibly made Dr. Iplier vince next to the Host. In blind anger and probably confusion Dark tried to throw off his assailant, flailing and failing in it.

Wilford held on heroically, with one arm threw over Dark’s front holding the bucket of ice cream and the other opening it and scooping a spoonful of the dark chocolate wonder. “Sorry Darkling!” he said as he with one leg, looped around Dark’s waist and with the others foot, stepped into Dark’s lower back, which seemed to cause pain for him, as he opened his mouth again to scream. He then stuffed the scooped ice cream into his mouth, shutting him up before he could scream again. The air was still for a moment. Nobody dared to move as they watched Wilford cling to Dark’s back and now slowly letting go of the spoon. They stayed like that for a few second then Dark’s shoulder visibly slacked. Dropping his arms, his aura went significantly calmer than before.

He tilted his head back forward, seamingly staring blankly into nothing, then without a word he turned on his heel and left the meeting room, spoon still hanging out of his mouth and Wilford hanging off of him like a backpack.

The others could only stare at the door for a while not knowing how to take in what they just saw when Bim spoke up in a shaken voice. “ Maybe you should bail while you can.”

Bing could only nod at that dumfoldedly before he took off running. ------------------- The obnoxious android only dared to come back to the Ego building after three days. He was hiding out at Chase Brody's place, fearing that if he had stayed, Dark would have come and murder him when he was least expecting it. He would have stayed there longer if he could, but after the day it was apparent he will need his charger, which he left back home in his hurry to escape, and that drove him back. After entering the building he tried to sneak back to his room. In his way he managed to avoid stumbling into any of the other egos. Soon he reached the living quarters and the door to his room. He felt like Fortuna had smiled upon him until he opened his door. What he saw was... Well nothing! His room was almost completely barren except for the thrash can, which started to move! Mini Bing's head popped out from the empty trash can and turned towards Bing and shouted "I CALL DIBS!" then fall back into it. Bing just stood in the doorstep, feeling his jaw slowly drop in confusion and disbelief when a hand suddenly clasped on his shoulder, startling him out of his stupor. "Bing!" Shouted a very excited Wilford Warfstache. "Oh bully! It's good to see you back!" He seemed genuinely happy to see him. "And here we thought you would never come back!" "Incorrect." Injected Google, who just turned the corner and walked towards them. "Bing left without his charger and unless he finally realised himself, and wanted to rid the world free of himself, he would have come back for it." "Oh yeah! About that, here!" Wilford dug into one of his pockets and pulled out Bing's charger, handing it to him. "I had to save it in the last moment before Dark threw it away." Bing looked down to his charger, still processing the information he was just bombarded with, he slowly reached for it, taking it from Wilford. "Attaboy!" The pink man said as he clasped his shoulder once more before walking away then poofing away to god know where from the corridor. That left only him and Google- "Hmp." Aaand with that Google left the corridor too, leaving only Bing alone to contemplate on his lifestyle choices and its costs. "At least he could have left my skateboard."

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~A spoon full of ice cream, will make the demon calm down! The demon calm down.~

[reactivebangtan]

REQUEST: bts reacting to there gf/crush being dark-skinned? And them moving to Korea ( if gf ) and then getting insecure about it? For crush maybe their an exchange student they see on the street or at a coffee shop? thank you and sorry if this was vague!! 💞 REQUESTED BY: anonymous WARNINGS: body image? also slight references to discrimination.  NOTES: this request made me a smile a lot and i think it’s bc u were so sweet about asking so thank u for that, nonnie. i hope u had/are having/will have a good day today

he could tell as soon as you stepped off the plane — something was bothering you, something that you tried so desperately to simply swallow before he catches on, but he always does, anyway. at first, he says nothing about it and simply lets you be, hoping whatever it was would die down with time. you had just moved to a new place, afterall, and were surrounded with new people, new things, new experiences, and it was only fair that you’d be nervous about something. eventually, though, he can tell such a thing isn’t going to happen — whatever it was always seemed to be at the back of your mind, nagging you like a bitter aftertaste that lingers on your tongue, and just as you think it begins to fade it only becomes more prominent all over again. it was all he could do to simply ask, a gentle ‘ what’s bothering you, love? ’ coaxing the answer out of you with ease. a simple explanation is all it takes, though such a thing is never simple — the stigma that comes with having dark skin is something that exists in every place, all over the world, inevitably following you wherever you go and effecting you in ways you don’t even realize — and while there is no solution he can offer it seems a little bit of the weight has been lifted from your shoulders simply from saying it ( nothing is ever easy to carry on your own ). despite not having a way to strip you of your insecurities, jin is quick to talk it out with you and do everything he can to reassure you that’s it okay, it’s understandable, and that he’s here to support you when reality becomes a little too much to bear. for every negative thought or comment, he’s there to provide five compliments and ten times more love and reassurance. ❝ it just means you’re closer to the sun — that must be why you’re the light of my life! ❞

❝ you’re beautiful — looks people give you and the things they say can’t change that, so don’t bother believing them. believe me, instead. ❞ not once has yoongi ever wished to change anything about you, skin tone included, and he doesn’t hesitate in telling you this every chance he gets. you’d confided in him before you’d even fully decided to make the move, but living closer to him seemed to outweigh everything else — at least, until you actually got there, and your anxiety made you feel as if you stuck out more than ever. it seemed to you that every time someone looked at you they were judging you, forming negative opinions of you, saying nasty things to their friends, even if the logical part of your brain knew that wasn’t truly the case. yoongi is always quick to catch on, often distracting you before your brain got up and ran with every nasty thought you could conjure up, finding this to be the most effective way to not allow you to think about it. of course, the thoughts always remained, and they’d find you at the worst of times — he knows the feeling, knows what it’s like to be unhappy with certain parts of yourself, things you can’t change no matter how much you might like to, and he uses that to level with you when things get particularly rough. it’s a weight that never leaves, always presents itself when you look at your reflection in the mirror, but one that he gladly helps you carry. 

it’s not easy shifting into a new society, especially when it treats you as if you can’t — still, hoseok is adamant that it can. he always takes the chance to compliment you, tell you that you’re perfect, because to him you absolutely are; he treats it as more than a simple opinion, more than convinced that it’s fact. of course, he isn’t blind to discrimination and he knows that nothing he says can change the stigma surrounding dark skin, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to convince you that you’re still beautiful despite all of that. every day he’s telling you how wonderful that color looks on you, how right the sun is washing over you, how beautiful the entirety of you is. besides insecurity of your own appearance, he knows how easy it is for everything to stack up against you simply for the pigment in your skin, and he’s always the first in line to start pushing those barriers down with his bare hands, one-by-one. ❝ nothing changes the way i see you, even if others don’t see you the same way. ❞

❝ i know what they say and i know how you feel, but i also know that you’re stronger than all of that. ❞ while namjoon does compliment you when he has the chance, he works to do more than simply convince you of your own beauty — he’s so incredibly adamant about convincing others, too. he’s always been an activist for one thing or another, and this sort of thing is inked onto the list in bold, capital letters. it isn’t as if he’s light skinned himself, and he’s experienced the indirect shame of it through some of his own fans, but he never gives up on the fact that there are plenty of minds out there that think the way he does — enough, he hopes, to one day change the way everyone thinks. in the end, he’s always there to shut down negative comments thrown your way, and does what he can in the only way he knows how to shut down their opinions, too; educating himself comes first, but educating those around him is deemed just as important. he might be softspoken and far too gentle for his own good, but he’s never been as iron-willed as he is about anything and everything that involves you. and, while standing up for you in any situation, he always takes great care to make sure you come away from it with something positive gained, even if it’s something as minuscule and seemingly meaningless as never having to see that person again. every little thing, every little step, counts.

there are always going to be things that, throughout the generations, carry endlessly from one person to the next, whether it be views, beliefs, traits or biases. opinions grow like weeds, no matter how beautiful the garden may be, and most try to suck the life out the most wonderful flowers, causing their beauty to fade from the inside out — they never stop being that wonderful flower, but even the strongest stem wilts when enough damage is done. jimin understands what it’s like to be that flower, even if the weed has little to do with skin color and everything to do with other beauty standards; it rots at your brain, at your thoughts, until you can’t make out the positives anymore. in his own way, he waters you with compliments and tries his best to reinforce the fact that he sees you as nothing less than absolutely gorgeous, while also using his voice and position to reinforce the fact that these issues need to be addressed; it’s so much more than just you, or just him, or just anyone, and he can’t kill your insecurities until he ends the things that created them. ❝ i wish you could see yourself through my eyes — there’s nothing brighter than you. ❞

❝ you’re so beautiful, you know that? i don’t see anything but you. ❞ you don’t exactly tell him, but he knows what you’re so anxious about right away. it’s easy to spot from the way you look towards the ground and try to cover up as much as possible, doing what you can to not meet other’s eyes and staying out of the spotlight. taehyung gets it — the comments he’s personally gotten still stick with him, the edits people make always stand out, and knowing that even fans think that way makes it all the worse — and while he never explicitly says anything directly about it, he’s obvious about making you feel better about it. he’s always been the one to pull you out of your comfort zone and introduce you to new things, so it’s no wonder that he gets to step you out of the shell you’d buried yourself in and gets you to face the chill of reality with his warmth to guide you. on top of that, he’s always been nothing but supportive of every little thing you do, so even the smallest compliments are made when you least expect it and he reaches out when you stumble on your path to self-acceptance. with his support he hopes that one day you can brush the discrimination and stigma like water off a duck’s back.

jungkook doesn’t always know the right way to say things or how, exactly, to express what he means at the right time, but he tries to do what he can in the ways he knows how. after you move to south korea, he’s constantly taking pictures and videos of you, always saying that the light is hitting you just right or ‘ i want to remember this! ‘ and saving them all in a special file labeled for you on his phone. he loves the way the sun glows on your skin and the way solid colors look against you and how naturally you contrast against the bright emeralds and warm hues of the leaves outside. photos of the smooth expanse of your stomach exposed by the top you decided to wear that day, or the length of your legs in your favorite dress, or even how the light filters through the windows against the structure of your hands are among the ones that reveal your smiles and bright eyes. when he can’t quite say what he means or he stumbles over his words, he just lets you sift through the folder while commenting on exactly why he took each one ( ‘ i understand why they call it the golden hour now that i’ve seen the afternoon sun on you like that ‘ and ‘ you reminded me of a painting in that one — i think it’s one of my favorites ’ ). ❝ you’re beautiful like this, just the way you are. ❞

[eeveedel]

Alex roughly eating louis that I'm all I'm sayin . Just a thought . I dunno . I haven't seen Dunkirk yet I'm gonna of spoilers

@celebratinglouis u send me the nastiest shit but also thank u. 

this is just…it’s porn. it’s angst and porn and feminization kink and poor coping mechanisms. also it’s written in like three different tenses. listen, I’m sorry. I hope you like it anyways, bc this is a concept I could write…more of. Also a few Dunkirk spoilers! 

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The train spewed steam, hot and compressed, behind him, and Alex still found the ability to push forward.

He hurt, and he couldn’t even identify where. His ears were ringing, and he’s only now noticing it. He thought his neck and his head might hurt, but then again, his wrist and his ankle might, too. It’s just everywhere. His eyes stung even though he was just asleep, his mouth tasted like warm beer and warmer water.

He blinked, and brought his hand up to his eyes, his other hand tightening on the strap of his pack. There’s no sunlight in the station, but he still feels like he should lift his hand, get a better view.

He’s standing there on the platform, three dimensions, full color. He’s wearing nearly the exact same thing he wore to the station the first time, the grey trousers and the brown braces and the big, open pale blue jumper that’s gotten paler, bordering on grey.

He’s the most beautiful thing Alex has ever seen. He’s the only beautiful thing he’s seen in a while.

Alex forced himself to take a few more steps, until he’s right there in front of him and he has to tilt his head down a bit to get a good look at him.

“Hi,” Louis said, and his voice was the same, raspy and Northern and soft, and Alex wanted to wrap him up in his arms and kiss him, dip him, spin him around like some of the other boys and their birds get to do.

But instead he just swallowed back the stiffness in his throat as Louis looked back at him carefully.

“Come on,” he said, “I’ll get you home,”

***

The flat was the same, which is to say small and dirty, partly because both of them hate cleaning but mostly because it’s a place that was built dirty and will be destroyed dirty. Louis changed the sheets on their bed, and the bathroom at least looked decent. He offered to run Alex a bath but he refused, and instead used up the warm water they could spare filling the tub. Then he stripped down, leaving his dirt and oil soaked uniform on the tile floor. There was still oil and sand in his hair, around his nails, enough he wonders if it’ll ever wash out. He wonders how Louis could bear to kiss him once the door was closed.

When he pulled himself out of the bath, he saw that Louis had set out some clothes on the bed already, a pair set of drawers and an undershirt with the paper ribbon still on it, a starched overshirt folded neatly over top of it. Alex pushes the overshirt aside and just goes for the under things. He won’t be going out for a while.

He went back out to the kitchen, then, fully prepared to sit down at the table or to first fruitlessly offer to help Louis with something. But as soon as he was in the kitchen he stopped in the doorway, almost didn’t want to breath, just wanted to stay there and remember this, exactly, forever.

Louis was standing at the stove, the gas of the machine thick and hot in the air. There was a small carton of eggs next to his elbow, behind that, a paper bag of bread. His hair is the same, soft and getting too long, his lips poked out as he cuts a razor thin slice of butter into the pan.

He was wearing his slip. The silk ladies’ night slip that someone at the corner store probably still thought Alex bought for some bird. It looked beautiful on him, it always has, even if the silk is wore and the lace over his chest looked stiff and wrinkled and a little yellow. The slip fell to Louis’s knees, the thin straps clinging to the knobby bones of his shoulders, the rest of the fabric skimming over his waist, his hips.

He was thin. He’s always been little, but he’s thin, now, some of his softness chipped away by long nights and civilian rations. His knuckles stuck out a bit, his fingers look delicate while he cracked the eggs in the pan, lifted a fork to break them up.

“How long’s it been since you’ve had real eggs?” he asked. It took Alex a minute to answer. He can see every bone rotating in Louis’s wrist.

“A fair while,”

“You’ll get sick of them soon. Probably get sick of bread sooner,”

“I’m already tired of it,”

“Then we’re off to a good start,” Louis murmured. He pushed the eggs around, the bottoms sticking to congeal the pan and sticking.

Alex breathed in deeply and went over to him, then, putting his hands on him the second he could. He pulled the cool, slippery fabric of the slip up, got his hands on the swell of Louis’s behind.

“Missed you, babydoll,” he murmured into his neck, and Louis huffed, pushing an elbow back.

“Not now,” he sighed, “You’ll make me burn it,”

“You’ll burn it anyways,”

Louis huffed and jabbed his elbow back again, making Alex have to jump out of the way.

“Go sit down,” Louis said, “You want tea?”

“Sure,”

“I’ll put the water on after this, then,” Louis murmurs. He lifts his hand, wiping at his forehead. There’s sweat building there from the pure heat of the stove. The thin strap of his slip falls a bit and Louis grabs it, slips it back over his shoulder.

Alex used to think Louis had the kind of face that men won wars for. He probably told him as much at the station before he left.

Now he realizes how much it takes to win wars. He’ll have to come up with a new metaphor.

When Louis served him a plate, the eggs were dry and black in places and the bread’s not much better, but the tea was good and nearly milk-less, which is how Alex’s always liked it. Louis sat across the table from him, nursing a cup of tea of his own, and Alex kept glancing up at him as he ate.

“Come closer,” he muttered at one point around the egg and bread in his mouth, and Louis just shook his head.

“You eat,” Louis said easily, “You got skinny on me while you were gone,”

Alex’s throat immediately felt thick, since Louis looked worse off than he did, but he didn’t say anything, just cast his eyes back down and pulled more food into his mouth until the plate was clear. He drank down more tea, letting the food wash down, and then he brought his head right back up.

“Now come here,” he said, and this time Louis just nodded and stood, his slip shifting and falling easily back over his body as he went over and then cast himself easily on Alex’s lap, his legs sprawled on either side of the chair, his feet pressed to the floor.

“Hope this is what you wanted,” he said, and Alex could only nod, couldn’t even bring his hands up to grip him, not when his nails still had oil in them and Louis looked so clean.

Louis’s eyes were closed and he pushed forward, pressing a soft kiss to the swell of Alex’s Adam’s apple, then moved lowering, his lips brhsing the hollow of his throat.

Alex’s hands tightened on his waist as Louis kissed him. He wanted to wash away in the feeling, but he couldn’t, not when he had barely gotten a good look at Louis’s eyes earlier.

The boy he’d met on the mole, the one he had never bothered to ask a name for, had told him after the fact that the man with the blankets was blind, that it would make no difference with whether he looked up at him or not. But people at the first station had cast their eyes down, voices had flown like razors.

Them boys don’t deserve the Royal uniforms when all they did was wait for a pick up.

Alex swallowed roughly, blinking back the burning behind his eyes, and he squeezed Louis’s waist once, enough to get his attention.

“Can you look at me?” he asked, and Louis easily lifted his head. His eyes found Alex’s immediately, and they were soft and bright, a mirror of the smile on his lips.

“What do I look like to you?” Alex asked softly, and Louis snorted and draped his arms over Alex’s shoulders.

“What, you want a compliment?” he said, still smiling, “Just need someone to tell you you’re the prettiest thing since the Crown Jewels?”

Alex tried to swallow again, but he felt his face shift and harden, making Louis frown.

“Alex,” he said softly, “What is it?”

“I did some bad things,” he managed, and Louis shook his head.

“No, you didn’t,”

“I ran away,”

“You got evacuated,”

“I could’ve stayed,”

“Yeah, and then you would’ve been brave and dead in the fucking French sand and where would that leave me, huh?” Louis asked, and pushed forward, pressing their noses together, “Did you think that through?”

Alex licked his lips, “I’m sorry,”

Louis sighed and drew back, “Listen. I don’t know what it’s like out there. I got a heart that skips too many beats that keeps me here. But I know you weren’t gonna just run away for no good reason,”

Alex swallowed hard, shook his head, “I tried to kick someone off a ship. He was French. Didn’t even do anything wrong, I just didn’t want to die,”

“That’s a reasonable thing to want,”

“That’s fucking selfish,”

“Yeah. You’re selfish, I’m selfish. I would’ve forgiven the whole army dying if you wound up safe on my doorstep,” Louis said. His voice was hard, and Alex knew he wasn’t going to win this argument, if that’s what it even was. He never won any of their arguments. Louis had soft eyes and a hard head and those were tough to compete with.

Alex shook his head again and then tilted his chin down, looking at his own lap.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and Louis sighed and caught his fingers under Alex’s chin, making his gaze lift right back up.

“You’re home now,” he said softly, and Alex nodded.

“I know. I want to be home. I don’t want to think about that right now,”

Louis just looked at him carefully and nodded, shifting in Alex’s lap. As he moved, the strap of his slip fell down again, drooping to reveal more of his chest, a peaked, dusty nipple popping out.  He lifted his shoulder, pressing it nearly to his ear as he gripped the wrinkled silk, tried to pull it back up to cover himself. Alex caught his wrist, made Louis loosen his fingers.

“Don’t you go acting coy on me,” he said, making his voice as light as he could manage. Louis blinked, then shook his head, smiling at the change in his tone.

“How were the birds in France?” he asked, “They pretty?”

“Not as pretty as you,”

“Not what I asked,”

Alex swallowed, and then shrugged, “Sure they were. Didn’t get much more of them,”

Louis lifted his brows, tilted his head.

“Yeah? What about those eight-pagers you boys pass around?” Louis asked, “Find something you like there?”

Alex swallowed, “No,”

He’d seen them. Of course he had. They were more valued than water and yet shared far more easily. He’d wanked to a picture in one of them once, a girl with dark hair and some blue shorts and not much else. He’d just covered the top part, kept the image of flared hips and a round bum and just pictured a firm chest and a stubble-sprinkled chin over top.

He liked girls just fine. But girls weren’t Louis. Neither were other boys, for that matter. For Alex, there was just him. Just Louis.

Louis smirked, shook his head.

“You just waitin’ around for me then, huh?” Louis said, and Alex nodded, which only made Louis laugh.

“I’d forgive you if you did, you know,” Louis said, “Find a dame you like, have some fun. I’d let it go,”

“No, you wouldn’t,”

“Sure I would,” Louis smirked, in a way that meant he certainly would not, except when he was following through with what game he was playing, “Because I’m still your favorite girl, right?”

Alex blinked up at Louis, at his sharp face and his parted, dry lips and his eyes, so big on his slimmer face.

“Huh?” Louis prompted again, and then lifted his hands and pushed on his chest, the push of it creating a small line between his pectorals, peeking over the edge of his neckline, “Don’t have a great rack like the other girls do but you don’t care, do you, love? You always liked what’s on the bottom, anyways,”  

Alex licked his lips again, his throat suddenly feeling dry.

“You’d be right about that,”

“I know,” Louis smiled, then leaned forward, pushing his mouth firmly on Alex’s lax lips, “Come on then, handsome, you were all about that earlier, what’s the point of you having hands if you don’t put them to use?”

Alex lifted his hands, then, hesitating for a second. Louis gave him a sharp and expectant look, though, and then he pushed his hands forward and then back around. He gripped Louis’s bum in both hands, a thick swell under the slippery silk. Louis rolled his hips forward and Alex groaned shifting his own lap to meet him. His cock felt thick and hard in his drawers but he couldn’t get any friction on Louis, not when he was squirming around his lap.

“You got Vaseline?” he asked.

“Of course,” Louis scoffed, “You wanna be the one to go get it?”

Alex groaned, then shook his head.

“I got a better idea. Get up,”

Louis blinked at him but shifted himself, getting his feet flat on the floor and then lifting himself up until he was standing. Alex got up to, set his hands on Louis’s waist and then kicked at the chair behind him, giving them more room in front of the table. Louis’s gaze lifted, his eyes widening for just a moment before he looked back down and then turned, so his back was pressing to Alex’s front. Alex leaned forward, pressing his lips firmly to the side of Louis’s neck.

“Lean over,” he murmured, and Louis pushed himself closer to Alex’s touch but then leaned forward, setting his hands on the edge of the table. Alex pushed against the small of his back, his fingers barely getting traction against the slip.

“Yeah, come on, baby doll, show off for me,” he said, “You know you want to, wriggling around in your bed things like some call girl,”

Louis exhaled loudly and then pushed himself out, flattening his belly against the table and pushing his legs and hips out more. Alex got a hold of his hips and then roughly shoved up the back of the slip over the pale swell of Louis’s arse. His hands went right to his cheeks, then, and gave them a squeeze and then spread him out to see a tight hole and his pinkening cock and his swollen balls.

Alex lowered himself onto his knees, the tile of the kitchen biting his legs, and he nipped at the inside of Louis’s thigh. Louis yelped, high and strained, and Alex lapped over the pink mark on his leg before kissing it. He dragged his lips up the inside of his thigh, bit again at the soft swell of the underside of one cheek, which made Louis whimper a bit too loudly.

“We have neighbors,” Alex said a bit too firmly.

“I know,” Louis sighed, “Maybe they should put up with it. Nancy from upstairs got her husband back a month ago and I’ve had to listen to them try to make a baby every night since then,”

Alex laughed, pressing another kiss to Louis’s arse cheek.

“Could give you a baby if you wanted that,”

“Even if you could, I’d rather you give me whatever you’re planning back there,”

So Alex lifted his chin and pressed his mouth right to Louis’s hole, giving it a soft kiss that made the other man inhale sharply. Then he pushed in hard with the point of his tongue, keeping his lips hard and tight over the ring of muscle while he licked.

Louis twitched, his hips moving and pushing, and Alex flattened his tongue, lapping roughly a few times over his rim, keeping his hands tight on Louis’s thighs while he did. He lowered his lips, kissing the soft skin of his taint, and then lapped over the whole area, from the base of his rim to the very tops of his balls.

“Alex,” Louis exhaled, soft and sharp, “Alex, baby,”

He didn’t speak, mostly because he didn’t want to pull away. He kind of wanted to spin Louis around by his hips, get his cock in his mouth just to feel the weight of it, the way it perfectly filled his mouth without making his jaw too sore, so he could hold him in a place he could easily look up and see Louis’s face.

But when he brought his lips back to his rim, Louis gasped again, and it was enough to keep his mouth right there.

He kept his tongue pointed at firm, and he prodded at him, licking around his rim and the inside of his cheeks, then pushed straight into his hole like he was trying to open him up even without his finges. He’d flatten his tongue back out occasionally to lick broader strips over him, a few times he could put his tongue back entirely, kiss his hole and his taint and his balls. He lifted a hand, dragging it on the inside of Louis’s thigh, even reaching out to stroke at Loius’s length with his knuckles. He was hard, and leaking, and Alex’s own cock was thick and tight against his drawers, but he’d live if he could keep listening to the sweet, sweet sounds Louis kept making.

And then, suddenly, he had to pull away because Louis was crying.

“What’s wrong?” Alex asked as he got back to his feet. Louis was collapsed fully on the table, his legs shaking and his head buried into his arms, and his shoulders were quaking. Alex touched his shoulder and tried to get him to turn over, and then went easily, his face pink and wet when he was finally on his back.

Alex opened his mouth to speak, to apologize or to at least ask if he was alright, but Louis beat him to the chase.

“I love you,” Louis gasped, “I love you, you understand me?”

Again, Alex tried to speak and he cut right in.

“Don’t you dare think it would’ve been better if you hadn’t come back,” Louis said, “I don’t care if they had to haul you out, you’re here now,”

Softer, he spoke again, “You’re here now,”

Alex nodded and leaned forward, hovering right over Louis.

“How am I supposed to leave you?” Alex murmured, “Pretty face like yours is what someone can dream of coming home to,”

Louis looked up at him easily, his face still so open, so forgiving, and when Alex spoke again, his voice was in danger of cracking and he didn’t even bother trying to swallow it down.

“I love you,” he said, “You’re the only person I’m ever going to love, baby doll,”

Louis gave him one more long, long look, and then grabbed his shirtfront and tugged him forward, narrowing his eyes as he did.  

“You listen to me,” Louis said, “You go into the bedroom and find the Vaseline, and then you’re going to fuck me. Alright?”

Alex nodded, and Louis pushed his chest, enough to make him stumble back and trip over his feet as he went to the bedroom, found the tin of jelly in the top shelf of their shared dresser before he rushed right back to the kitchen, took his place in front of Louis’s easily sprawled body.

He slicked him down and held down his wrists, thrust his hips forward into him until the table quaked and the top of Louis’s slip slid all the way down, nearly to his waist. Louis cried out, loud and high, enough that if anyone heard they’d probably think he was a bird. He didn’t take him long for him to tremble and for his cock to spill all over the edge of his slip, a couple droplets slipping off his sharp hips and onto the table. It’d be a bitch to clean up, especially the cold water and scrubbing Louis would have to put into getting the slip back into shape. But Alex couldn’t even care, because he was pushing forward, spilling into Louis, making the other man groan weakly and buck back. His face was slick and pink, his hair limp.

When he opened his eyes, they were dark and far off and shifting, like the waves of a sea Alex actually wanted to remember.

Louis reached out a hand, and Alex let Louis grab the back of his neck, draw him forward, kiss his lips softly and then drag a thumb over his cheek. Alex’s throat felt tight, and when Louis pulled back, he whispered carefully, his fingertips still lingering soft on his skin.

“Welcome home, Private,” he said, “I’ll make sure you want to stay,”

[damijon-supersons]

hey! i love your fanfictions they bring me to life. anyways can i request one where they are on a dangerous mission and jon doesn't want damian to proceed cause its to dangerous cause hes fully human and not bullet proof then a argument breaks out and Jon say sorry in a very romantic way *wink* if u know what i mean *gay wink* im sorry. ill leave it at that.

Sorry this took a while. It generally takes me a while to think of prompts, but this one in particular, I knew I had to make it cool :p So yeah, I hope you enjoy it. Also, I’m sorry if I got a little lazy and made it a Jon POV. I switch to first person when I get lazy cuz third person is too much work >

Something exploded above us.

I couldn’t tell what it was anymore with everything that was going on. The buzzing thrusters of robotic drones whizzed past us. Sounds of gunfire peppered the warzone. Energy beams sizzled through the air around us, their bright colored flashes defiantly lighting up the darkened sky. A red haze settled on the ground, making every outcropping of ruined concrete look like roaring flames that were frozen in place.

To my left, I was vaguely aware of Starfire and Firestorm spinning in the air together, blasting apart a dozen drones that had surrounded them so that they looked like a colorful and deadly light-up pinwheel. Somewhere ahead, I saw Raven dissolve into a mass of black and purple shadows that engulfed ten drones at once. Behind us, Aquaman levitated a gigantic bubble of seawater while Aqualad and Tempest channeled bits of it into watery javelins that rained down and skewered another army of drones.

Suddenly, Damian grabbed my hand and yanked me down into a crater on the ruined pavement. We fell in a heap at the bottom just as a red blur streaked across the sky almost faster than the eye could see, followed by an explosion of wind—a sonic boom. That was definitely my dad. Drones fell from the sky, and those that remained were swiftly gunned down by a sleek black jet shaped like a bat. It was tailed by an enormous 1940’s B17 bomber made entirely of green light, all of its ball and mounted turrets blazing with a Green lantern manning each of them.

Ever since Brainiac’s invasion started twelve hours ago, every hero in the world scrambled to earth’s defense, even the youngest heroes—even us. We looked as war-torn as you’d expect after fighting an endless wave of robot drones. Only half of Damian’s visor still stuck to his face. And his exposed right eye was bloodshot. His normally well-groomed hair had lost its sheen and stiffness, and his bangs settled on his forehead. His costume was torn and slashed in dozens of places, and a portion of his cape had been torn off.

I didn’t look any better. My face was caked with mud, dust and dried blood. My vest was riddled with a hundred burn marks, and the “S” in the middle had a gaping hole whose edges were singed black. The skin of the exposed part of my chest was a shade of pink lighter than the rest of my body. My jeans were so ragged and torn that I was surprised they haven’t disintegrated yet, although my left pants leg was already sheared off just above the knee. The torn strip of Damian’s cape was wrapped around my knee like a tourniquet, the closest thing to a splint that we could manage.

“That dome in front of us is their forward operating base,” Damian said, pointing to a metal structure ahead of us. “I’ve scanned the inside. It’s only a hallway connected to the main command module, guarded by a platoon of drones. If that base falls, the drones will lose communications, giving our fathers and the rest of the league the advantage they need to assault Brainiac’s command ship.”

“Okay,” I nodded with a grimace.

Above us, Lex Luthor and Blue Beetle were shot down by drones larger than the ones before, and they streaked back down to the ground with a wailing screech that sounded like a crashing airplane.

“We can take them,” I continued. I stood up and winced as my hand gripped my thigh on reflex. I hobbled toward Damian’s side, but then he stopped to face me and gripped both of my shoulders.

“No, Kent,” he said firmly. “You’re staying here. You’re in no shape to battle with that broken leg. I’m going alone.” He turned to leave, but I grabbed his hand.

“Idiot!” I shouted angrily. “You can’t possibly take that base alone! You’ll be overwhelmed—!”

“I’ve won against overwhelming odds before,” Damian snapped, cutting me off.

“You’re also injured!” I insisted, the frustration clear in my voice. “You don’t even have powers!”

“I’ve never needed powers to be a hero!” Damian spat.

I bit my lip, I didn’t want to make Damian angry. He must have seen the look on my face because his scowl melted.

“Damian,” I urged more softly, “You’re going to die.”

Damian sighed and looked me in the eyes. He steadied his voice, although his expression was grim.

“Jon, our fathers gave us this mission—they’re counting on us. If we fail, the whole world falls. As we speak, the Teen Titans are risking their lives to clear the path for us, and Grayson and the rest are fighting a losing battle to give us more time! With your leg broken, you’ll slow me down! I have to do this alone!”

“Stop being stubborn!” I argued. If I could let him feel my frustration and determination by punching him, I really would have. “I’m going with you whether you want it or—“

“I CAN’T PROTECT YOU!” Damian bellowed. The pain and desperation in his voice shook me to my core. Then in a softer, voice, he repeated, “I can’t protect you.”

“Damian…” The look on his face scared me more than anything I’ve seen during the invasion. For the first time ever, Damian looked afraid.

“I can’t lose you, Jon.” Damian’s chest heaved. “If we go in there, there’s no guarantee we’ll get out alive. At least if I go alone, I know you’ll be safe…” Damian’s face fell and his shoulders sagged.  

“Dami,” I said as gently as I could. I cupped his cheeks with both of my hands. “I’m sorry, but you’re a big idiot.”

“What…?”

“I can’t lose you either, you big jerk,” I continued, I felt my lips curl into a resigned smile. “You’ll need a better excuse than my broken leg to get rid of me. We promised, remember? We promised that we’d be with each other whatever happens.”

Despite himself, Damian smirked. “You have the absolute worst timing when it comes to declarations of love, Kent.”

“When is it ever a good time?” I grinned. “We’ll go together. We’ll win together. And if we don’t…”

“We’ll still be together,” Damian finished, his voice clear and determined.

I stood up. Pain shot up my broken leg and through my spine. I gritted my teeth and summoned all my willpower to resist the pain. Damian supported me on his shoulder and we began to walk. We walked until our pace got faster. We walked faster until we broke into a run, straight into the enemy gates.

Time blurred as we rushed the base. Every passing moment was filled with the smell of ozone as I fired my laser vision at everything that moved, and I flailed my fists at everything that it missed. Damian was a whirlwind of deadly metal with his twin katanas, reducing robots to scrap with calculated strikes. We stood back-to-back, destroying drones as we made our way to the control room. We covered each other’s blind spots and complemented each other’s moves. While he recovered from a broad slash, I blew a gust of freezing breath. When my heat vision stopped, his explosive batarangs took its place.

Finally, we were at the command center’s door. I threw out one big punch and the door crumpled and flew off its frame in a fraction of a second. In front of us stood a huge humanoid robot over twenty feet tall. The top of its head had exposed circuits shaped like a brain, and it had glowing red eyes. Its face resembled a human skull with a missing lower jaw. Three other smaller robots flanked it, and all of them faced us, guns at the ready.

“That reminds me, tomorrow’s your birthday, isn’t it?” Damian asked as he crossed his swords in front of him.

“Oh, right!” I admitted. “With the end of the world and all, I kinda forgot.”

“Well,” Damian began, “since you’ll be a proper teenager tomorrow, I might actually—maybe—consider you a real member of the Teen Titans,” he teased.

I rolled my eyes at him. “You’re such a jerk.” I’d meant what I’d said, but I was still smiling when I said it. “I don’t know why I ever liked you.”

“I may be a jerk,” Damian agreed playfully. “But I’m your jerk.”

“You better have a present for me tomorrow, jerk.” I chuckled.

And with that, we charged straight ahead, staring death right in its ugly robotic face.

[keshetchai]

hey! i saw ur post about human sacrifice/Christ as a sacrifice. just wanted to let you know basically it's taught among Christians that Christ had to pay the price for our sins & He alone was capable of doing that. As someone fully human as well as fully God, He was able to fulfill & forgive that debt that we owed God bc of our sin. If a master tells his servant not to kill any of the master's sheep, it is right for the servant to obey, but it is still within the master's right to kill a sheep.

2/2 I understand that this isn’t the teaching in Judaism and I’m not asking you to agree, just trying to shed some light on the Christian perspective! This is a question that gets asked a lot in Catholicsm (not sure about the other Christian denominations) and if u want to look further into it i know there’s solid theologins out there that have talked about it!!

Ah, maybe it wasn’t clear in how I wrote my post, but I am an ex-Catholic! I am a Jewish convert, but grew up Mexican-Catholic. 

I looked into this kind of theology quite a bit while I was still Catholic, and found the principles and reasons given (like the ones you gave me) to be personally dissatisfying. I get that lots of people believe this, that it is part of Catholic (and Christian in general) belief, and so on, but uh, I guess basically I didn’t accept any of the statements that lead to that conclusion. I know the teaching, I just find it spiritual unfulfilling and “Begging the question.” 

For those curious, this is also a good example of why I was not good at Catholicism™. The asker is right, these aren’t how things are viewed Jewishly (this is all Catholic/Christian theology), but also just in the context of reading the Christian/Catholic Old Testament, I felt I had a list of theological problems I could not solve to my own satisfaction. Because while there are significant differences between Torah and OT, some of the underlying leaps of…well, faith, remain. 

Basically I happily admit this is (part of) the reason why Christian theology was not good for me, but may satisfy others. (Or rather, what spiritually satisfies you, does not satisfy me, and that’s all okay!) 

For the sake of…I don’t know, a dual view, my response to this line of reasoning, I think, makes it obvious why I decided Catholicism wasn’t for me. ;) It also shows I deeply appreciated a Jewish attitude towards theological questions and biblical events, that is to say, “@hashem, what the heck???” 

So ex-Catholic me had the following…issues (and I come from a long line of very argumentative bible readers, ahaha): 

“had to pay the price for our sins“ 

Original sin is not a concept in Judaism and was not “known” to the writers of the Torah/Tanakh. And so by extension, original sin was not a Thing at the time Jesus would have been alive. 

So therefore, which sins? 

If it’s just “sins” in general, why does someone need to die to “pay the price”? (Remember Hellfire and Damnation also Does Not Exist in Judaism) 

Why must a price be paid by someone else? In Judaism and in the Torah, the price of a mistake/sin/harmful act should be rectified by the person who did the thing personally. If a “sin” (and sin means something different in Judaism than it does in xtianity) is committed against another person, then to fix the problem you must essentially pay the appropriate damages (as in a court of law) or make things right between you and them, and “Repent”. If the “sin” or mistake is made against G-d, then we are told A.) a sacrificial offering based on the kind of act done is appropriate BUT B.) failing that, prayer is the appropriate course of action, and a sacrifice is never the only option:Hosea 14:3 Take words with yourselves and return to the Lord. Say, “You shall forgive all iniquity and teach us [the] good [way], and let us render [for] bulls [the offering of] our lips.In point of fact, Solomon, during the inauguration of the temple, tells us that if someone is not in Jerusalem (and therefore able to make a sacrifice), then they should simply pray:Kings I 8:46-4946 If Your people go out to battle against their enemy, by what way You send them, and pray to the Lord toward the city that You have chosen, and (toward) the house that I have built for Your name.45And you shall hear in heaven their prayer and supplication, and maintain their cause.46If they sin against You, for (there is) no man who does not sin, and You will be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, and their captors will carry them away captive to the land of the enemy, far or near.47And they shall bethink themselves in the land where they were carried captive, and repent, and make supplication to You in the land of their captors, saying, ‘We have sinned, and have done perversely, we have committed wickedness.’48And they shall return to You with all their heart, and with all their soul, in the land of their enemies, who led them away captive, and pray to You toward their land, which You gave to their fathers, the city that You have chosen, and the house which I have built for Your Name.49And you shall hear their prayer and their supplication in heaven, Your dwelling place, and maintain their cause.And this will be enough for God. 

What sins are exceptions to the rule that God will accept repentance through prayer and change of deed and action? (See also: God sending Jonah to have a community repent - and they do so only by prayer and fasting.) 

Why are they exceptions? Why were these exceptions previously unknown before, and is that not a “Stumbling block before the blind?” 

Why would God give us a debt we could not fulfill on our own? 

Why does the master need to kill a sheep? For what purpose? 

Why would “the master” declare killing men to be evil and wrong and banned, but then go and do it themselves? 

Is that not hypocritical?

Does that hypocrisy not seem alarming? like if that was a test, then people who accepted the blood sacrifice of a man failed.

And shouldn’t we openly question and rebuke this change of the law, a very important and fundamental law to not sacrifice our children/sons? After all, Abraham rebukes God for threatening to kill everyone in Sidom and Gemorrah since he had promised not to do so after the Flood. Shouldn’t we, as humans, rebuke God for sacrificing his “son” in DIRECT disregard of his own command to not sacrifice children/humans in general? 

Can we trust a God who would sacrifice their own son against their own law? (The lesson of Abraham’s near sacrifice might suggest No, you should not attempt to sacrifice your son, hence why an angel intervened. I also hold that Abraham misunderstood the instruction to “take up your son” as “sacrifice your son” - the words “take up” and “sacrifice” in hebrew sound the same!)

After all, Jesus said he did not come to replace the law, but to uphold it [Matthew 5:17]

Importantly, if Jesus was meant to uphold the law, then any sacrifice done outside the temple mount (as Jesus’s crucifixion most certainly was) is null and void, as sacrifices outside the mount are expressly forbidden and actually a grave sin. 

Does that not nullify said sacrifice pretty dramatically?

[SIDE NOTE: God also very explicitly banned drinking blood at all, whatsoever, and yet Jesus says to drink his blood? what???]

If God is all-powerful and unending, why would God become a man and die, even temporarily? To what purpose? 

God becoming a man takes away from his oneness attribute and quality. Trinitarian doctrine is the reasoning that god is one, except when god is three, which is also one. 

“He alone was capable of doing that”

 why? 

Was God not capable? 

Did God lose their all-powerful ability?

why (again) is an unrelated Son-of-God-figure  the only one capable of redeeming people? (Did not God personally redeem the Israelites in Exodus?) 

Is mankind not capable of atoning for our “sins” and righting our wrongs? 

What could Jesus really do that God couldn’t, if they are indeed the same? (if they are the same, how is this still a singular God characteristic of monotheism?)

what was the point of making a non-human person the only one capable of solving and absolving very human problems? Does it really teach us anything except to be dependent and not worry about our personal responsibilities? 

I could keep going, but these kinds of things are why my mom didn’t think it was wise for me to go to Sunday school, lest I get in trouble for arguing with a nun. lmao.

All of these questions “could” be answered, but they’re more or less rhetorical and I ultimately did not find myself satisfied with the answers I found in/from the Church and also found no person reason to believe in Jesus “saving” anything or anyone. 

[hoesidon]

I tend to delete fics out of my bookmarks on ao3 once a fic is completed to avoid clutter but here’s a few fam :)  “*” = smutty “ ♡ “ = personal fave  Also, Shallura is mentioned/side pairings in a few of these fics but I think a few of these were written before the age reveal so sorry if that makes you uncomfortable please don’t give those authors grief about it. I put a warning next to the fics that contains shallura (if i missed any i’m sorry). Sorry nonnie all I really read is klance :/ If anyone wants to add to this list feel free.

Klance:

The Ultimate Wingman: by luna_fox Summary: Lance and Hunk have moved in to the new student apartments at Garrison University called The V at Garrison. Living on their floor, they meet and befriend their neighbors: Pidge, a child prodigy in robotics. Matt, Allura, and Shiro, life time friends with the boys watching over their siblings. And Keith, the anti-social boy who hates change. As time progresses, they all become friends and Lance finally finds someone to help him explore his bisexuality - his gay neighbor Keith. They strike a deal = Lance helps Keith find a social life while Keith becomes Lance’s wingman, but what happens when both men realize that their deal has become more complicated than they expected. Words: 133,128 Chapters: 25/25

The Ties That Bind by: Smiles4Voltron, Weirdpersonhere  (also warning for side Shallura) Summary: Lance fell hard at Garrison, unable to stop himself from adoring his rival. However, when Kerberos went missing Keith changed. Through time, Lance got over his broken heart, swearing to never allow himself to get hurt like that again. So how come he is falling for the same tricks a year later when he is reunited with Keith and the two of them get chosen to save the Universe through Voltron! Words: 151,322 Chapters: 25/?

Blueprints by: UnderTheSilentStars  (also warning for side Shallura) Summary: “While soulmarks themselves were common, it was rare for someone to have anything other than the name of their other half…and Lance had a red paw print.” Soulmark Au Words: 44,948 Chapters: 26/?

So Anyway, Here’s Wonderwall by: fairietailed, themuffintitan  ♡ (also warning for side Shallura) Summary: Lance can’t seem to look anywhere but Keith as he performs. He doesn’t bother trying to hear the music over the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears. – In which Keith is a bassist and Lance is weak. Words: 59,166 Chapters: 15/?

Ignorance Is Bliss by: YouAreInAComaWakeUp (Nikanaiko)  ♡ Summary: As it turns out, learning that your house is haunted makes the ghosts a lot more aggressive. Who knew? Ah, well. At least one of them is hot. And he’s the less-evil one, too, so that’s always a plus. Words: 172,675 Chapters: 30/30

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things by: Acequisitor  (also warning for side Shallura) Summary: Wine Aunt: Oh shit Hunkin’ Donuts: Great googly moogly Space Dad™: Well that’s enough for today Nigel Cornberry: I leave for 20 minutes and this is what I come back to? Nigel Cornberry: Can you kids relax for just one minute? Words: 23,976 Chapters: 9/?

Lonely Will Wait by: ciuucalata  (also warning for background Shallura) Summary:  “I should get rid of these fucking stars,” he mumbles getting out of bed. Like usually he opens his window blinds, letting in the warm summer wind and the light that steals the stars’ glow. He put them up twelve- maybe thirteen years ago, when he first started to have the dreams(memories?) and when they still reminded him of a time when he was a hero together with a group of strangers that felt like family. They make falling asleep easier at night, just like they did back then, but the panic and the helplessness that he feels every morning are no longer worth it. (or the one with the reincarnation where Lance is the only one who remembers but doesn’t let it get in the way of him finally having a normal life with his old family) Words: 25,527 Chapters: 5/?

True Love or Something (series) by: DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee  ♡ ♡ (also warning for side Shallura) Words: 173,324 Works: 33 Complete: No

The Volton Chat Fic No One Asked For by: fleep  (also warning for side Shallura) Summary: dont hunk with my heart: did u really photoshop ur face over a man in a chicken costume running from the police keith is fine: thats pidge hunk pidge is the police dont hunk with my heart: howd u make that so fast lancemememachine: ive had this saved up for an occasion like this Nobody asked for this Words: 19,281 Chapters: 16/?

legendary meme defenders by: Kitsune300 Summary: getting bi: gbfyhed guys Im dead getting bi:  you might as well plan my funeral space dad: hello dead, I’m dad getting bi: SHRIO STFU smol and ready to brawl: lance that is no way to speak to your father Words: 34,441 Chapters: 25/?

Power-kick by: Johnny_kun  ♡ ♡ (also warning for side Shallura) Summary: “I am so sorry, you just fell so hard for me and I feel bad about it now.” Lance had to admit that his pick-up lines were getting better.

“Did you kick the ball?! Purposely at me?” The black haired man asked, voice laced with annoyance as he got up, ignoring Lance’s offered hand for help.

“It was an accident, really. I was showing my children how to do a power-kick.” Lance’s flirty smile didn’t change the unimpressed expression on the stranger’s face.

“You should show them how to apologize now.” Words: 59,966 Chapters: 23/?

Spaghettification and Other Extreme Sports by: SociopathicAngel Summary: During their final battle with Zarkon and the Galra Empire, Zarkon creates a black hole capable of destroying the universe. Lance sacrifices himself and Blue in order to stop it… and ends up in an alternate universe where everything is just a bit not right Words: 17,978 Chapters: 4/4

The Quiet  by: MilkTeaMiku Summary: Does he not realise he’s dead?

Keith can see ghosts. As a part of his Garrison training, he’s sent to a hospital to do one year of medical clerkship - it’s there that he meets a charmingly irritating ghost who definitely needs to learn what boundaries are. Words: 50,000 Chapters: 25/?

Foreign Scenes by: bwyn  ♡ Summary: Lance has been dreaming of travelling since the first time he heard stories from his family as a child. Now, having finally the time and money to do it, he goes on a trip to Europe to see some of the most culturally rich cities on the continent. Except he keeps bumping into the same guy over and over again, in random cities, doing stupid shit, and ultimately dragging Lance into his trouble, too.

Basically an AU in which Lance and Keith become impromptu travel buddies and get into trouble.   Words: 110,580 Chapters: 13/13

If Fireflies Cast Shadows  by: Sasaina_Ai Summary:  You’d think finding your soulmate would be difficult, since there’s only one of them and over seven trillion people in the world. Thankfully, God decided to take pity on his creations, and gave each person the very first words their soulmate would say to them. It was always in their personalized handwriting and the color that best describe them, decorating the wrist of your dominant hand. And, if you touch it after you meet them, you can send them your emotions, even thoughts if your connection is strong enough.      

And that’s all fine and dandy - except it isn’t.

Because Lance McClain, the fun-loving guy with groan-inducing puns and pick-up lines that never work, who’s six-foot one with a good attitude and a hundred friends, has the words “Don’t fucking touch me, asshole” scribbled in messy red letters on his left wrist. Words: 50,200 Chapters: 3/3

Botched Ink by: Syremia  (also warning for side Shallura) Summary: “Your soulmate is that who shares the same symbol on their skin as yours.” Was all Lance had been teached since a young age. He was the only one in his large group of friends to not have a symbol of his own. Just as he thought he was gonna live alone until he met Keith in a bar. The problem was that Keith already had a symbol of his own. (Warning: Various mentions of heavy drinking ahead) Words: 33,806 Chapters: 8/?

Kiss My Ice  by: delictor  (also warning for side Shallura) Summary: Lance hasn’t skated in a year since the accident that cost him the Olympics. Keith can’t skate for shit but that doesn’t stop him from catching Lance’s attention, even when he can’t so much as stand up after falling on the ice.  ‘When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.’“Soon as we’re off this ice you’re dead.” Keith’s threat is an empty one and he knows Lance can tell by the way he laughs at it. “Serious question though, do you not know who I am?” Lance questions. “Should I?” “No, I guess not.” Lance shrugs. “I’m gonna twirl you, okay?” “No, no don't—wait!” Keith cries out as he’s suddenly viewing the entire arena and his legs go rigid before colliding into Lance’s chest, his chest rising and falling with laughter, hands gripping Keith’s upper arms gently. “Put me back on land.” “Technically, we are on land.” “We’re on frozen water, get me off it.” Words: 40,250 Chapters: 6/10

Entangled by: mackerelmademedoit Summary: When Keith found himself mentally linked to Lance of all people, he never thought that it would end in anything but irritation and misery on both sides. He certainly never imagined that it would be a useful asset in team Voltron’s fight against the Galra Empire. Now if he can just keep his feelings in check, they might actually have a chance at defeating Zarkon.

Needless to say, when he’d wished for a 'bonding moment’ with Lance, this wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind.

(Eventual romance and mature content for later chapters). Words: 101,859 Chapters: 12/12

Crossroads by: manamune Summary: When Keith crashed his Lion into a Galra warship in order to stop it from destroying a solar system, and more importantly, his friends, he was fully prepared to die for it.What he didn’t prepare for was to wake up in an alternate universe where he and Lance were dating. Words: 106,833 Chapters: 25/25

Of booty shorts and Injuries by: Queerswimming Summary: Keith is sure that he’s having a heart attack. Or that he hurt his brain when he fell earlier. Because it’s simply not possible that the boy who’s sitting next to him is not a hallucination. How could someone so gorgeous just sit in an emergency room at night?“Keith and Lance unexpectantly meet at the emergency room in the middle of the night. Words: 23,862 Chapters: 4/4

Loving Him Was Red  by: Resamille Summary: Loving him was red, just like the suit Lance now wears in Keith’s absence. Words: 4,135 Chapters: 1/1

Stowaway by: glubsauce  (also warning for minor Shallura and Hunk/Shay) Summary: When Lance finds a handsome stranger hiding in the backseat of his Jeep on the way to Pidge’s birthday party, he can’t help but wonder what his story is. Luckily for him, after he drops him off at his destination, he quickly gets revisited.

Lance is a bi college student who lets Keith, a dfab genderfluid 21 year-old, stay at his apartment after Keith runs away from home. Words: 27,109 Chapters: 9/?

you never stood a chance by: kagshina Summary: lance to hunk ♡ >i’m gonna fukin die hunk oh mygod i sent >keith a work out selfie that i wan supposed to fcukin send to you and you know what it said >”BET YOU WANNA LICK THESE NIPS” >HUNK I WILL NEVE BE ABLE TO FCE HIM AGAIN I WANT TO DI E(Or, Keith is beautiful, Lance has a crush, and there’s lots of shirtless selfies) Words: 12,221 Chapters: 1/1

little numbers by: ashtxns  (also warning for side Shallura) Summary: brolance: keith is officially CANCELLED Words: 18,441 Chapters: 22/?

Better than coffee by peralta Summary: When Lance tries to curb his coffee addiction by replacing it with boba, he can’t help but linger around a perpetually grumpy-looking employee who works at the nearby teahouse. Keith, despite all the Yelp reviews, turns out to be surprisingly kind. Lance starts coming every day—although he insists it’s only for the boba.

And to complain about the customer service, of course. Words: 21,314 Chapters: 4/4

nothing’s quite as sweet by dimpleforyourthoughts, thebrotherswinchester  ♡ Summary: Keith is a barista who hates his job. Lance works at the cat shelter across the street. Words: 50,370 Chapters: 1/1

Infection by: Talinor Summary: "Citizens are advised to stay inside at all costs until the infection is under control,” Nyma’s voice was slightly stronger when she spoke up again. “And if you come across a possibly infected individual, do not- I repeat, do  not-  come into contact with them. This infection is reported to be highly contagious. If you see someone you believe is infected, stay away and report them immediately. Officers will come to take them to the nearest vacant hospital as soon as they can. Please try to remain calm, and lock your doors.” Words: 20,615 Chapters: 5/?

Six Feet Over by: freshia Summary: “And, right, of course. He hadn’t told Pidge—or Hunk, actually, who was sitting on the other side of the table from him—because somehow “I see dead people” just doesn’t quite have the same effect that it surely had before 1999. Go figure.”

Lance Sanchez sees ghosts. Lance Sanchez also tries his best to avoid ghosts, until he literally can’t, because his new apartment is inhabited by one very confused ghost named Keith. Words: 47,313 Chapters: 13/?

Sweet Tooth by: Huletty Summary: Lance took a breath and walked forward through the swinging door. He kept his mind focused on one task. Get those damn pastries. Don’t look at anything but the pastries, don’t touch anything but the pastries, don’t speak to anything but the pastries. Don’t even glance at the kid with the mullet, who was currently putting frosting on a new batch of cookies, pink tongue slightly sticking out of his mouth in concentration. 'What I would do to have that tongue on my- The pastries!’ Lance jerked his vision away and back to the cart full of stacked trays.

Otherwise known as the Bakery/Cafe/Pastry Shop AU this fandom needs but probably not the one it deserves. Words: 11,175 Chapters: 5/?

Team Voltron: a group chat by: Castielwinchestar  (also warning for background Shallura) Summary: This is absolute trash with a kinda-sorta plot it’s so much fun and I’m basically writing my interpretation of the entire Voltron Team on crack so please read this I promise you won’t be disappointed <3 Words: 23,512 Chapters: 21/?

Skinny band nerd takes it up the ass from the beefcake football captain (series) *by: Lynn1998  Words: 50,727  Works: 7 Complete: No

To the Universe and Back with You by: manamune  ♡ Summary: Lance and Keith were friends with benefits slash tentative boyfriends when the Galra empire fell. And just when their real relationship was starting to begin, Keith took off without a word, leaving Lance with a broken heart and a whole lot of resentment.

Fast forward seven years later and Lance is the only paladin living on Earth, with his cat Peaches for company. It’s not perfect, but he’s happy.

That is, until Shiro summons them to form Voltron again and Lance has to face his greatest fear: the past. Words:10,100 Chapters: 1/3

Nightmares by: Trashness  ♡ Summary: Lance’s nightmares are getting out of control. It’s effecting his and the team’s performance, but he’s at a loss for how to fix this.

Apparently sleeping next to a warm body helps. Words: 14,864 Chapters: 1/1

At A Loss For Words by: Quiznakles Summary: A mission goes wrong and Lance (temporarily) loses his voice. The team starts to forget and Lance doesn’t have the heart to remind them

Or

The weird Mute!Lance AU that no one asked for. Words: 4,282 Chapters: 3/?

True Affection Floats by: somethingaboutwriting  (also warning for side Shallura) Summary: Under the sea, Lance dreams of living in the human world, disobeying his sister Allura’s rules left and right. On land, Keith is tired of his royal life in which nothing ever happens. That is, until his ship wrecks and he is rescued by a mysterious boy with white hair and bright blue eyes.

A fluffy little(ish) fic about two hopelessly oblivious boys falling in love in a Disney universe. What could go wrong? Words: 18,218 Chapters: 4/7

Keith the Cat by: Madame_Kiksters Summary:  He would find him again. He wouldn't lose him like he lost Shiro. Words: 9,468 Chapters: 6/?

Gaining Social Competence by sweet_rabbit  ♡ (also warning for side Shallura) Summary: “My name is Keith and you’re going to be my friend!”

The boy, Lance, looked up from his grass picking project with wide blue eyes and responded, “…Qué?”

‘Kay? Keith thought. Like… “okay?” He said okay?!

It was official: Keith had made a friend. His dad was going to be so proud.

-

Where Keith starts his criminal record early at age five and unintentionally kidnaps a kid who barely speaks English. It actually goes splendidly uphill after that. Words: 10,029 Chapters: 5/?

Say You Won't Let Go by Julietisntdead  Summary: After being hospitalized for a serious accident, Lance comes home to his roommate, his cat, and a... strange ghost?

Keith just wants to chill as a ghost, but his world turns upside down when he meets Lance, the only person who's ever been able to see him.

Despite his own problems, Lance is dead set on helping him. It may be the death of Keith. For a second time. Words: 21,034 Chapters: 10/15

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes by pidgeotto_gunderson Summary:  When Lance is captured by the Galra, the rest of the crew finds him quickly - alive, but unconscious. The team tries everything they can think of to wake him up, but find that the only way to do it is to project another’s consciousness into Lance’s. Keith volunteers, and dives into Lance’s headspace, with only the instruction to bring Lance back with him. But when Keith finds himself getting sucked into the fantasy that Lance has built, he not only has to figure out how to drag Lance out of la la land, but he now has to hold on to the memory of another world - the real world - that is suddenly slipping through his fingers. Words: 50,010 Chapters: 2/2

Laughter Lines by maunder  ♡  (also warning for side Shallura) Summary: Once a homeless teenager, Keith is now a young, successful businessman who owns the most popular new gym in the state. Lance is a surrogate, single dad to his young siblings, and is doing his best to make ends meet. Neither has the time or desire to fall in love. Doesn’t stop it from happening, unfortunately. 

*

“Surprisingly, no one wants to go out with the 23 year old dude with three kids under four and no time or money to treat them to fancy dates.”

“I do.” Words: 46,432 Chapters: 11/15

Bruises Like Blankets to Keep Us Warm (series) by:  PrincexofxFlowers ♡ (also warning for side Shallura) Words: 29,854 Works: 2 Complete: No

A Commutual Contract by SKayLanphear  ♡ Summary: After a terrifying experience during which Lance, seemingly, dies, Keith is haunted by horrible nightmares of holding his comrade in his arms while he took his final breath. To the point where he can't sleep unless he knows for absolute certain that Lance is alive.

And while the attention is surprising, Lance doesn't really have a problem with Keith checking up on him. Or the fact that Keith only seems totally comforted when he can cuddle Lance close and hear his heart beat. After all, there's nothing wrong with two bros cuddling. It doesn't MEAN anything. Or, at least, that's what Lance keeps telling himself. Words: 84,148 Chapters: 13/?

Love Bite(s) by ArchetypeOfAdespota Summary: In which Keith gets bitten by a Love Bug, and Lance is less okay with this than anyone honestly expected. Words: 8,906 Chapters: 4/?

in your shoes by lydiamartin ♡ Summary: Hollywood did not prepare him for waking up in the body of a complete stranger.

Keith tried not to stare at this person’s junk in the full-body mirror. He did not know them, and no matter what Pidge might say, just because he’s Texan it doesn’t mean he was raised in a fucking barn like a savage. He would not act like a savage.

(Or, the one where Keith and Lance live in different cities but swap bodies – and angry love notes – multiple times a week.) Words: 42,320 Chapters: 10/?

Smokey the Bear Has Nothing On You by psychicScavenger Summary: Keith Kogane is on the Altea Fire Department and while volunteering for Altea Elementary's Safety day, he runs into his high school rival/crush Lance McClain. Words: 50,804 Chapters: 16/16

Runner-Up by CalicoThunder Summary: It's been one month since the defeat of Zarkon.

The five Lions have convened and chosen Lance as the new Black Paladin- but this decision causes rifts and wrinkles in the delicate emotional atmosphere of Team Voltron after Shiro's disappearance. With Universe in war-torn despair, Voltron is needed now more than ever- and the team will have to adjust to the new mode and (re)learn to work together.

And all the while, they're searching for Shiro: Where is he? How can they find him? Will they like what they find? Words: 26,008 Chapters: 4/?

The Canvas Effect by neadevar Summary: “For god’s sake, Lance, will you please stop drawing cocks on your arm.” “Hey, no, we have a thing, me and dick face. I draw them a penis every morning and evening on the dot.” ------- Lance Mcclain is desperate to find his niche in the world, thought he might have when he discovered he had a soulmate. Only his soulmate seems to be a dick. Drowning under student loans and the crushing weight that is adult responsibility Lance tries to figure out where he stands in the grand scheme of the universe. He didn't realize everything would change with just a bellybutton piercing.

AU where when you draw on your skin it shows up on your soulmate. Words: 23,514 Chapters: 6/?

Ghost of the Future by wittyy_name, Zizzani ♡ ♡ ♡ (also warning for side Shallura) Summary: When Lance is thrown through time, his future self from one year ahead is transported to the past in his place.

This Lance is faster, stronger, and markedly more mature. Not only that, but he's distinctly more intuitive about his teammates and A LOT more touchy with Keith.

The team must try and work out how to reverse the two Lance's places and restore them to their original timelines. Things only get more complicated when the Future Lance can't seem to remember where he was when the switch happened, and he refuses to reveal anything about his own time for fear of influencing the team's decisions.

Mirror fic to "Shadow of the Past" by wittyy_name

Words: 38,932 Chapters: 4/?

Shadow of the Past by wittyy_name, Zizzani ♡ ♡ ♡ Summary: When Lance is thrown through time, he finds himself one year in the future, in place of the Lance that should be here.

He finds his team to be remarkably familiar, yet distinctly different. They have more scars, a better grip on the whole saving the universe thing, and over a year’s worth of teamwork to bind them together. But the weirdest part? Keith seems to be a lot more touchy with him. Not that he’s complaining… much.

The team must try and work out how to reverse the two Lance’s places and restore them to their original timelines. But despite the fact that they’re still his friends, Lance can’t help but feel a little out of place among a team that’s been through so much with a Lance that just isn’t him. And it doesn’t help that the team is on edge around him, refusing to tell him anything for fear of influencing and changing the past. Things get even more complicated when they have to rely on the team in the past to complete the switch, leaving Lance to little more than sit, wait, and attempt to fill in his future self’s shoes.

___________

Mirror fic to "Ghost of the Future" by Zizzani Words: 43,402 Chapters: 4/?

Non-specific pairings:

familiar by achieving elysium (Ogygia) ♡ Summary: Altean!Lance AU. The only one who remembers the fall of Altea, Lance struggles to find a place in a band of misfits he will never fully trust. Secrets aren't the only thing on the rise; on the other side of the battlefield is Zarkon, someone Lance once saw as a brother and now his greatest enemy. But Voltron has always protected the universe, and the Blue Paladin won't stop now. Words: 93,596 Chapters: 28/29

mostly void, partially stars by dakhtar ♡ Summary: “Werewolves can’t be astronauts,” Derek’s annoying voice had grumped. “Werewolves can’t be pilots. Werewolves can’t be fighter jet pilots, Lance, for God’s sake, Werewolves can’t pilot giant space robot cats that join together to become a giant space robot man and fight an evil purple bat-cat empire!”

Well, he hadn’t said that last part, but Derek totally would’ve. (Alt title: seawolf) Words: 17,349 Chapters: 3/?

Shallura: 

Just A Classic PTA Romance by dinolaur ♡ Summary: Shiro and Allura's lives are turned a bit upside down when they receive calls that their sons have been sent to the principal's office for fighting at recess. Words: 25,582 Chapters: 4/?

[downtowndaegu]

Experimates?

So i’ve had this idea for a while, and i thought it’s time to put it to tumblr...  also, if u like it, do u want a part two? - Admin Kay

GENRE: Fluff? IDK soulmate au tho MEMBER/SHIP: Namjoon x reader SUMMARY: “I doubt we can call it soulmates… More like experimates?”

“This has been bugging me all day, but,” Y/N paused for a bit, tugging on her shirt, “wasn’t this shirt red?”  

“Red? What do you mean?” Her coworker said, confusion fluttering in their eyes.

The two of them were sat in the on-site canteen their company provides.  The two girls had decided to take a lunch break a bit earlier than usual, but only because Y/N’s coworker was going on holiday and would be leaving earlier.

“Red. Like it was maroon type of red, but it was red, right?”

“What is Red?” Her coworker said, screwing open her water bottle and taking a sip.

“What do you mean? Red! As in the colour red!” Y/N’s voice rose up in volume, but not by a lot, just enough for her to get the message across that she wasn’t in the mood to mess about.

“Ok, I don’t know what world you’re living in, but ‘red’ does not exist.”

After Y/N’s encounter with her friend, she asked a few more colleagues about her shirt being red, only to get the same answer as the first time, ‘what the hell is red?’

So, when her shift ended, she left on the dot. But trying to make her way home as fast as possible wasn’t easy when every thing around her, that was once red, was now a similar palette of grey.

And given the fact that she just recently moved in and relies on the huge neon-red sign opposite her apartment block to signal which is hers, it took her even longer to get home.

Quickly getting into her apartment, she leant against the door and called her mum as quick as she could and skipped the greeting to tell her how badly she was freaking out.

“Y/N, it’s fine! You’re probably just experiencing some sort of colour blindness type of thing!” Y/N’s mum said, clearly too absorbed with the dishes that she was clinking to realise that her solution didn’t fit in.

“Mum, that doesn’t make sense then! If I’m the one experiencing the colour blindness, why doesn’t everyone else I’ve spoken to know about the colour red?!”

“Maybe they’re playing a prank on you?”

“I doubt my coworkers got together with most of the people in my complex to play a ‘what is red’ prank on me!”

“Calm down, just Google it. Like you do everything else.”

“Google’s probably just gonna tell me that I’m going to die like it does with everything else. But okay, I’ll give it a shot. I’ll call you back once I’ve figured out what’s going on.” Y/N replied, ending the call and making her way to the living room to get some answers.

Getting simple answers of Google wasn’t an easy task, especially when it kept referring to a bedtime story Y/N’s mother used to tell her when she was younger.

“Soulmates?” Y/N question aloud, going through another 50 articles that all said the same thing.

Apparently, soulmates were a thing, but not everybody got a chance at them, in fact, it wasn’t even a handful that had the opportunity. 

Just a few babies born before the millennia year hit had been affected by a dodgy experiment done by a dodgy scientist.

“Mum, do you know anything about soulmates and an experiment?” Y/N asked her, holding the phone between her ear and shoulder.

“Yes.”

“And?” She questioned, knowing fully well her mother never gave abrupt, short answers unless the answer was too long and twisted to give out instantly.

“Around the time you were born.”

“Yeh, I know, Google told me that much. Google also tells me that ‘around the time I was born’ meaning, a day after I was born, the scientist was caught… So can you tell me what really happened?”

“I refused when they asked! I didn’t want you to be a lab experiment, you were my baby, and I love you but they mixed up the forms and you ended up having this experiment done.”

“So, you got mad?”

“I got mad, and I outted him.”

“Good going, Sherlock. How am I meant to know how to fix this?”

Obviously, figuring out that the whole ‘what is red’ fiasco was actually just soulmate-code for, you’re gonna meet your soulmate today was reward enough for you to hop on the Starbucks train and go straight to espresso land. And heading there at nearly midnight, you weren’t surprised to see people with hoodies up, and eyes barely open.  

“Excuse me miss, I might be wrong but, wasn’t that booth red?”

“Wait, you know red too?” You asked the tall man who had found his way to sitting opposite you in the booth.

“Yes! Everyone I’ve asked just don’t remember!” He replied, his expressive tones and facial expressions putting his dimples on show.

“Well, I looked on the internet, right. And it’s apparently something to do with soulmates?”

“I read that too! The dodgy experiment? I doubt we can call it soulmates… More like experimates?”

The joke pulled you off guard, what with your whole day being a mix of serious and confusion, so hearing someone understanding what you were going through and actually being okay with it was amazing.

“I’m Y/N.”  You said, a few minutes after the two of you had calmed down, hoping somehow you could get a friendship out of this.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Namjoon.”

[papanorth]

Okay the obvious, tuckington

u kno what i like

001 | send me a ship and I will tell you:

when I started shipping it if I did: About the time where the Freckles Shake incident happened, but before it was revealed that everyone was fine and that Doyle was only as evil as Kimball. That period of “WHAT’S HAPPENING TO WASH DONUT AND SARGE” and Tucker frantically trying to work things out was just too much of the stuff I like for me to resist.

my thoughts:On the ship?? I think everyone knows my thoughts on the ship by now. I love it, I’ve spent too much time thinking about it, I genuinely think those two characters would work well together.

What makes me happy about them:They’re so important to one another! The actual romance part matters less to me than the fact that these two army dudes care about each other a lot and have had a significant impact on each other’s lives. I especially like that they both sort of found what they need/want with one another. Tucker gets someone who inspires or expects him to become a better version of himself, takes him seriously and guides him and has no intentions of leaving him (hello abandonment issues), while Washington gets someone who challenges him and requires him to earn respect (and not just forcibly take it by being intimidating and slightly murderous), jokes around with him, and (importantly) goes back for him if he’s left behind or can’t keep up. They both kinda met when they needed each other (and Caboose, like the entire Blue Team is a part of this ok) and probably surprised themselves with how well they work as a unit. 

What makes me sad about them:Realistically I don’t think their relationship- platonic, romantic, professional or otherwise- will ever be fully explored enough since RvB is a light-hearted series that isn’t very intent on exploring itself.Other than that, though, looking past the whole franchise, I think it’s fairly realistic that they themselves would never like...reach their full potential together. They both have issues and it’d take some major happenings for them to go that extra mile to flesh out their relationship. As a couple, their pining stage might last until one or both of them die or they part ways.

things done in fanfic that annoys me:When either of them is too nice or too like...timid. They’re jerks. Neither of them are good at being with people. Neither of them are the type to be super fluffy feel-good weepy boyfriend that cooks pancakes in the morning, and if that DOES happen, it needs to be peppered with snark and arguing and awkwardness imho. Like...good stuff in fanfic is good when you’re made to wait for it. Jumping right into it ruins it for me.ALSO: being in love doesn’t cure all your ailments. just saying. If a boy’s got trauma under his belt it’s not gonna get fixed like a leaky pipe ok.

things I look for in fanfic:Hurt/comfortHurt/comfortHurt/comfortHurt/comfortNo but I love it when people manage humour in fics, it’s probably really hard but so good when done properly. I like conflict and one or both characters being really stubborn and blind assholes, I like it when they have a serious conversation and communicate properly (possibly after some trial and error), love it when they help each other with their problems. Yeah that’s real far up there actually, loooooove it when any character is considerate of someone’s problems and works to make things more bearable for them. TEAMWORK IN RELATIONSHIPS (this ties directly in with the thing I DON’T like. Love doesn’t fix everything that’s wrong with you, just like, makes it more bearable.)

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: I would have super supported Washington and Connie but......she’s kinda dead. So.I could see Tucker and Kai happening, if only for the laughs on the show. They seem like a propely disastrous couple, and she’s babysat Junior before! (by locking him in a closet or sth lol)

My happily ever after for them:They get their own place on some planet where Junior can chill with them in peace, get some really wacky jobs that don’t entail so much death but also aren’t too boring, and stay in contact with the rest of the Reds and Blues. Maybe even live next to them. Or I’d actually be fine with the R&B teams just like...roaming space together. A family of galaxy crusaders, causing chaos in their wake, like Star Trek but less scientific more illegal. That’d be nice.

who is the big spoon/little spoon:Tucker is clingy so in the event of spooning, probably little spoon, but also he’ll probably turn around and Koala his man. He’s the big spoon in the event that he subconsciously migrates towards Washington’s ass in the night time, or if they start out not-cuddling, bc Wash likes his space and is very used to sleeping alone. So like, he doesn’t really think of cuddling in any way as a natural option so Tucker just ends up hanging onto him in some way. In fact I think Wash would like...always sleep on the very edge of the mattress and even if there’s no room Tucker WILL get his hands on his man. So either of them end up falling out of bed. Possibly both.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity:Arguing lol. I think they’d love just like debating on anything and everything and talking about whatever they feel like. Watching a TV show? Arguing about who the bad guy secretly is and why there’s no way it’s the dad character. Hanging with the reds? Arguing about whether or not Donut has had sex with any of them and if so, who was first. It’s not even really arguing, just like, passionately swapping opinions on things, probably revealing personal things in the meanwhile, learning about each other and shit like that. Convos fo’ days.But since people can’t always talk endlessly I’m also gonna say sleeping together, like taking naps and shit.