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re-d4cted · 1 year ago

Note

POST ABOUT THE GODS AU I CANT CARRY THIS BURDEN ALONE

you would be the one to ask 💀 I've been tormenting you for YEARS with this au

okay so since this is going to be a massive word vomit post ill put it under a cut after I give a quick summary of the basic premise

so there is a family of gods who are known to be cruel. who have a hatred for all mortals and will use them for their own entertainment as some sort of sick punishment for the wrongs of the past

philza, the God of death, and his sons techno, willow, grian (you can ask about this LATER), and tommy. who are the gods of blood, madness, tragedy, and chaos respectively

now to give a brief summary up to right before purgatory (I will be skipping over the grian stuff but if you want to know more about that I will explain) meaning I'm not going into full detail, because if I did this post would be a novel

*disclaimer!!!!!! I HATE dream but unfortunately he is a big villain in this au so he is gonna get mentioned just be aware that he will always be the most vile person in any au I make

DSMP

SO it all starts when willow gets bored of her challenges (the 100 player challenges) and decides she wants to do something new. she takes tommy and they disguse themselves as mortals and go to the land of dsmp to spread their madness and chaos there

tommy pretended to befriend tubbo because he found him interesting and then the three of them created l'manburg. tubbo doing it for a place to be free and the two gods doing it to see how other residents would react

the revolution was exactly what they wanted, beautifully chaotic and allowed willow to let her madness infect everyone who opposed l'manburg

erets betrayal wasn't planned but it was wonderfully entertaining for the gods watching the revolutionaries get beaten over and over just to keep getting back up

in the end tommy makes the deal to trade his disc's for independence because he and willow had already planned an election

and the elections go exactly as planned with the betrayal of schlatt being planned since the beginning. you see schlatt was someone willow had previously turned mad and she knew exactly what would happen if she brought him in

in Pogtopia is where things start to go off track, because tommy starts to realize that maybe his friendship with tubbo isn't just pretend and he starts trying to convince willow that blowing up l'manburg won't be as entertaining and leaving it be (it doesn't work)

techno just makes things more complicated because he wants blood to spill, and to help his brothers with their little game

the red festival and tubbos execution creates a conflict between techno and tommy, and willow just thinks it's because tommy wanted to mess with tubbo more. to settle this argument they fight in the pit

November 16th is when everything goes ary. at first everything is according to plan, techno "betrays" them, willow blows up the country, phil is waiting in the wings to collect all the souls. but then something unexpected happens, tommy doesn't go through with his part of the plan and refuses to kill tubbo

the others have to improvise, because even though they could kill everyone there, tommy doesn't want to and they aren't going to go against family, they couldn't care less about the mortals but tommy is another story and if he wants to play nice they'll let him play nice (for now). willow and phil stay back to keep an eye on him while also playing the parts of father haunted by his dead daughter just for the fun of it

and tommy does well for a bit, keeping his chaos in check at least, and not seeing tubbo as just another mortal (he couldn't care less about the others), he does find the newcomer interesting though and doesn't immediately dismiss them

when his chaos reaches a point where he needs to let some out he takes the new guy (ranboo) and goes to rob the mushroom house, things get a bit outta hand and the house ends up burning

tommy takes the fall

he gets exiled by the same person he went against his family for

he is hurt

brought to logstedshire, he plays along with whatever, letting his chaos and willows madness infect dream, taking joy in watching it consume the man. when he finally gets bored he leaves and joins his brother at his cabin

not even a week later the butcher army come to try and execute techno, which doesn't end well at all. tommy stayed behind while techno humored the mortals letting them attempt their little execution than easily breaking free and killing quackity in the process. phil goes with him

doomsday is planned by the gods to get back at the mortals who hurt their youngest. tommy blows up the community house so he give the warning for what's to come

during actual doomsday they finally reveal what/who they are, so the residents of New l'manburg can see just how badly they fucked up

tommy is supposed to kill tubbo, before he can however tubbo asks him if it was all fake, and tommy is honest. tells him that in the beginning it was but at some point that changed, and he started caring and now he'd be lying to himself if he said he didn't. he can't even bring himself to kill tubbo

something shifts in tommy and he is no longer chaos, and instead becomes loyalty

phil, techno, and willow are blinded by rage towards the people who made tommy hurt and attempts to kill tubbo but something unexpected happens

for his accomplishment of doing the impossible, making a cruel God kind, tubbo is turned into a God. the God of forgiveness

the three leave once tommy runs up and hugs him, realizing Tommy's domain has shifted and that like it or not a pair of gods have just been born

ranboo ends up being taken to the cabin along with tubbo because he has no where else to go. it helps that the gods have all taken a liking to him

over the next few months tubbo along with ranboo start working with the gods to try and get them to see mortals as more than just tools for their entertainment (the two also get married and adopt micheal at this point)

everyone else on the smp believe beeduo got kidnapped by them and keep trying to "save them" and failing miserably every time

ranboo happily playing cards and winning with them, cut to quackity spying on them and thinking this must be some advanced torture technique

all is well until tommy and tubbo get attacked by dream using a god killing axe (he was angry that tubbo took his only chance to become a god and now wants to kill him). while protecting tubbo and fighting back (killing dream twice) sam and the others arrive and think it's tommy who snapped and attacked first (they still think he is chaos)

he gets captured and put into the prison that was built to keep the gods imprisoned. tubbo runs back to the cabin and tells the others what happened, and while he is breaking down tubbos domain shifts from forgiveness to destruction and becomes cruel

Niki joins them at this point and the syndicate is formed

over the next few months while tommy is trapped in the prison, tubbo pretends to be glad he is free and roams the server letting off radiation and slowly weakening and killing anyone he comes across. just biding his time until the syndicate is ready to break tommy out

when they are ready they strike at night, tubbo gets in by pretending he wants to settle things with tommy and "get peace", once he is on the moving bridge he reveals his true colours letting his radiation kill the warden

he finds tommy weak and in chains, tommy who even after months in prison, has not gone back to chaos. wasting no time tubbo destroys the chains and breaks down the "impenetrable" walls with his destruction. meeting up with the rest of the syndicate who were waiting on the outside

ranboo and Niki were told to stay behind at the cabin incase tubbo couldn't control his power, unfortunately that's what dream was expecting. so while the gods aren't there to protect them, dream attacks, they hold him back long enough for the others to get back but right as they get there ranboo is struck with the same axe dream used against tommy

niki takes tom so tubbo and willow can go to ran, while techno and phil fight off dream. willow plays a song to keep ranboo calm, while tubbo tries to stop the bleeding. in this moment they are not the cruel gods they are known as, and like tommy months earlier, their domains shift

madness becomes music, blood becomes protection, and death becomes family

dream is killed for good this time, ranboo is healed by phil who refuses to let his death take him, and they leave for good with the few people they care about. they can learn to be kind later for now they need to heal

between dsmp and qsmp

there is about a 1000 year gap between the two. and the first 400 of those years is spent happily traveling together and leaning to be kind with ranboo and micheal, who have been made functionally immortal by phil (he asked beforehand of course)

willow is the first to split off wanting to play his music for the world and distance herself from her past madness. then tommy leaves because he wants to explore the world, techno goes with him for protection

leaving phil to look after the _Beloved family who have made a little home for themselves. tubbo has to leave occasionally go preform whatever duties he has as a god, but he always comes back. and micheal goes on his own adventures for years, even decades at a time, he too always comes back

after 200 years of this little routine ranboo asks phil the question he's been dreading for 600 years. he waits until tubbo is out of the house and asks if he could take back the immortality. says that he's been thinking about it for a long time and now that he's lived such a long life he's ready. when phil asks if tubbo knows, ranboo can only say his expression would make him change his mind

after explaining that ranboo would still have to live out the rest of his natural lifespan and that ranboo has to promise to tell everyone sooner rather than later, it is done, and ranboo is mortal once again

the first ones told are micheal and tubbo, who comes home a year later, the tears are expected and there are a LOT of tears, it's almost like ranboo would drop dead any minute and not live nearly another 100 years. tommy, techno, and willow find out not long after and their reactions are similar, with lots of tears and hugs

they all promise to make as many memories in the next 100 years as possible

and once those 100 years are up, phil personally escorts ranboo to the afterlife to be taken care of by his wife, the goddess of death

ranboo would be joined by micheal not much later

NOW FOR QSMP

qsmp is set long after the gods have learned to be kind (thanks to the efforts of ranboo and micheal) now the family is off doing their own things and trying to atone for their pasts. their old domains will always be a part of them and they still have power over them, but they don't abuse that power

willow and phil just so happened to end up on the same train to quesadilla island together. little did they know the descendants of people they once knew (and tormented) would also be on the island, along with foolish and slime who are the same people from the smp

they both end up finding foolish and slime and apologizing for what happened in he past. slime doesn't really care cause the gods never messed with him much, if anything he was one of they few people they were kind to, and foolish had no problems since what they did never really effected him 💀

of course neither of them reveal what they are to any of the other residents (that don't already know) and just go on with their lives on the island, well willow goes off island for a while so she can go off and spread her music and phil stays behind giving small blessings to the islanders

when the kids come it becomes increasingly clear why phil was drawn to this place, he is the God of family after all. and to his surprise all of the kids have been blessed by various gods given to the residents to be raised as new champions, and of course the one phil ends up with just so happens to be blessed by one of phils own sons, techno

when willow comes back she can feel the presence of the young champions, but there is a stronger presence that she couldn't explain, at least not until she meets tallulah

because unlike the other egg children, tallulah isn't blessed by a god, and she wasn't born from the dragon like the others (I WILL BE MAKING A SEPARATE POST ABOUT THIS BECAUSE I DO NOT WANT IT GETTING LOST IN THE MASSIVE SUMMARY POST)

while the other eggs are simply blessed by gods, tallulah is one, and she's not just any god, she's a god born from music itself, from willow

she's not sure about being her mother at first, she's too scared her lingering madness will infect and ruin her, but when she helps her paint her first sunrise she knows she will never be able to let her go

when she has to leave again she promises to send her the prettiest birdsongs every morning so she knows she will always be there for her. phil promises to protect her with his life while willow is away

the nightmare that happens isn't actually a nightmare, it really happened, and it's the first time phil uses his influence over death in centuries. he refuses to let his kids die like that, but if something like this were to happen again he wouldn't be able to bring them back. not without the other islanders finding him out

and no one does find out, at least not for a while, when the Brazilians came a few of them seemed to know something was up but couldn't quite place what it was.

when tallulah got attacked by the code phil got carried away and death slipped from his grasp causing tallulahs death

and everything goes back to normal, or as normal as things could be, until Bobby's death. and there's nothing phil can do, his domain may be death but even he has rules he must follow and he's already broken them once, he cannot do it again. the most he can do is bring Bobby's soul to the living world and allow his parents one final goodbye

he can't help but feel guilty for not being able to do more for the grieving parents of the island

when the codes disguse themselves as Phil's kids he is pissed, and he can't help it when death surrounds him. if he uses an excessive amount of power while fighting them, the only one to notice is etoiles who had only seen philza use this kind of power once before

finding tubbo had been a surprise, and phil hadn't expected the warm hug he got. not after he left 300 years ago, after the loss of his family. but as it turns out he missed phil greatly and was excited to see him again

introducing him to tallulah and chayanne was easy, and they took to him quickly. phil was quick to make him their godparent (pun intended)

one day after putting the kids to bed with him, phil could tell there was something on tubbos mind. he didn't have a chance to ask what was wrong before tubbo spoke, saying he hadn't put a child to bed like this since... he couldn't even finish his sentence. sometimes he would see micheal in the egg children and it was just too much for him

and once again things seem to be going back to normal until the eggs are taken away. phil knows they aren't dead, he would have known if the were, but still their absence drives him mad. he has half the mind to think willow is behind his madness but he knows his daughter would never

tubbo is a mess with them gone, he doesn't want to lose another family

the birdhouse is much like the prison tommy was once put in, and with the stress of losing the eggs, phil starts seeing things. and he really starts to wonder if some of willows old madness was re-emerging

willow comes back to the island as soon as she stops seeing tallulahs paintings in the sky, and when she finds out she's missing... that madness he's been running from sneaks back up on him. she leaves before it can infect anyone else, and when phil finds her later he doesn't mention it

when she finds the recording of her song with tallulahs turtles, all of the madness disappears. perhaps it's her music that will reach her

and that's all the notable lore bits up till purgatory (I am begging someone to send an ask about purgatory cause I have many thoughts)

^this is a lie, there is so much I left out, like the entire backstory of why they were cruel in the first place, or how any of the dsmp backstories play into this, and also Kristin's whole role in this, and I completely left out ALL of the Hermitcraft and life series stuff that has to do with grian

I just put the bare minimum and this is still monstrously long 😭😭😭😭

genuinely anyone who makes it to the bottom of this post good job, it took me days to write because it was all off memory 💀

anyways please send me more asks about it because writing it all down has made me brainrot over this au again

#monstrously long post #this ones for you fern #if i make posts about any of my other 3 year old aus they will be just as if not LONGER #dsmp #qsmp #sbi au #asks or something #gods au

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fishcowwrites · 2 months ago

Text

Nothing In Between

A Smallcrow Parkour Civilization AU

2.8k words cross posted on ao3 under cut

TW: broken bones, mentions of blood n vomit

i have no idea how broken bones work so bear with me here.

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

Three discs down, one to go. And there was a lot on Eric’s mind. Was that parkour fighter really telling the truth? Was Tanner plotting against him the entire time? To be honest, he should have expected this. After all, Tanner had worked for the lab that ruled Parkour Civilization. But it hurt more than it should, realizing he was lied to. Partially because he should have known better, but partially because some part of him had grown to like Tanner, despite how he was constantly mocked by him. But ultimately, all Eric could do was play along, get the next compass, and keep parkouring.

Speaking of parkour, Eric really should have been paying more attention to his jumps. He had already passed the parkour checkpoint and could see the house that Tanner was in. But in his anxiousness to question him, Eric had miscalculated and jumped too far to the side.

Time seemed to slow as he willed his body to twist toward the block and then – CRACK!

There was a sickening crunch as his ankle bent at an unnatural angle, hands clawing at grass as he screamed. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. If any fighters were around, they had surely heard him. There was no way he could do a parkour battle like this. But even if no one came, there was still the issue of getting back to the house. But, y’know, maybe his ankle wasn’t that bad!

Slowly, he shifted on the grass block to sit as comfortably as he could and looked down. Almost instantly, he had to twist around and flop onto his stomach as he coughed up bile and acid into the void. Eric didn’t know much about science or anatomy, but he was certain that his ankle wasn’t supposed to look like that. He dug his fingers into the grass, forcing his breathing to slow down.

Think. Think. Think, Eric. You’re the parkour champion. You’ve come this far. You can make it back. Slowly, he got to his knees, gasping slightly as he jostled his bad leg. Ok. Ok, that wasn’t horrible. Now for the next step… Eric gritted his teeth as one, two, three! He forced himself to stand, biting his tongue so hard that he drew blood. Coooooool coolcoolcoolcoolcool. Great. We’re good, we are SO good.

Eric was standing, but now what? If it had all been one block jumps, he might have been able to drag himself from block to block. But theses were three block jumps. He had no chance. No blocks, either. Should he risk calling out again for Tanner? No, no. That was a bad idea. Tanner probably wouldn’t hear him, and it might attract parkour fighters. No, he would have to do this the hard way.

Looking down, Eric realized his hands were bleeding again. His normal fingerless gloves were left in a drawer at home, maybe on a table, or perhaps even scattered on the floor. He had a bad habit of forgetting where he put things. But this time, it had a cost. The crystals had shredded his hands, far worse than the splinters he normally had to deal with. Using his teeth, he ripped off part of his sleeve, managing to create a wrap for one of his hands. Satisfied with his work, he did the same thing with the other. That was one problem taken care of, but now what?

Carefully, Eric unraveled his headband and tied it lower on his face, putting the knot in his mouth to create a sort of gag. There. He wouldn’t have to bite his tongue anymore, and hopefully it would muffle his screams. He was so close to the house, he just had to make it a little further like this. Well, it’s now or never.

Shifting his weight to his good leg, he backed up to the edge of the block and sprinted. BAM! Eric’s feet hit solid ground; his shriek of pain choked by the cloth in his mouth. He almost blacked out, but by some miracle he remained standing. Parkour God, save me, he prayed, as he readied himself for the next jump.

The next 20 minutes of Eric’s life were brutal. With each launch and each landing, it felt like Eric was shattering his bones into smaller and smaller fragments. Hell, he wasn’t a doctor, so for all he knew, he really was. It was as if his leg was being dipped into the parkour prison lava over and over again. So, to say the least, he was NOT having fun. Time seemed agonizingly slow as his muscles trembled and ached, screaming with ever jump.

Realistically, if he had called out, Tanner probably would have heard him. But his pride and stubbornness kept Eric silent as he collapsed through the entrance to the house. Inside was slightly better, as the floor was solid, save for the three-block gap in the middle. But Tanner was on the second floor, which meant Eric had to brave the stairs.

The stairs were all one block vertical jumps. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? WRONG. It took another seven minutes of literal blood, sweat, and tears before he made it to the top. Finally, he reached the top, where he was greeted by one last three block jump. But on the other side, he could see Tanner, facing away from him as he rummaged through a chest. But he didn’t need to make that jump, did he? He could just, y’know, talk to him from across the gap! He wouldn’t have to know anything was wrong.

Eric leaned against the wall as he undid the knot on his headband/gag and retied it back into his hair, trying to ignore the blood and spittle soaked deep into it. He smoothed down his hoodie, taking a deep breath as he tried to look as nonchalant as possible.

“Heeeeeeeeey, Tanner! Got the third disc, the, uh, crystal one.” Trembling hands pulled the disc out of his inventory and held it up. “So, uh, I meant to ask you-” Eric shifted slightly but accidentally leaned on his bad leg, crumpling to the ground as it sent white hot streaks of pain shooting up his leg. He yelped as the taste of blood filled his mouth, teeth grinding into raw flesh. When he managed to open his eyes, he saw Tanner in front of him, propping him up with an expression somewhere between concern and annoyance.

“You look like shit. What happened to you?” Eric blinked at him, swaying in and out of consciousness. Tanner’s words were like smoke drifting through his head, escaping Eric before he could make sense of them. “-ic? Eric? Come on, don’t you dare pass-”

When Eric came to, something was off. The pristine white concrete ceiling he was accustomed to was instead a crumbling, sandy brick. The sheets under him were rough, a far cry from the silken texture he had come to know. And then the pain kicked in. Sharp and agonizing, he tried to call out, but it was as if his throat was glued together. But before he could panic, a face floated in through the edges of his vision. It was Tanner.

“You’re a fucking idiot. You know that, right?” Eric tried to protest, but Tanner just shushed him with a smirk. “Go back to sleep. I can yell you later.” A glass vial was tilted into Eric’s mouth, the contents of which he obidently swallowed. Immediately, an odd warmth spread through his body, easing the pain and dulling his senses until sleep claimed him once again.

When Eric woke up again, it was dark outside. The pain in his ankle had subsided into a dull throbbing, and the fog in his head had cleared slightly. Turning to his left, Eric saw Tanner hunched over a brewing stand. “Tanner?” he called out. Immediately Tanner turned to face Eric, his expression unreadable.

“You’re awake. That’s… good.” Tanner said, fiddling with an empty potion bottle. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but his stopwatch cut him off. Carefully, he removed a freshly brewed potion from the stand and put the empty bottle in its place.

“Here. Drink it.” He handed it to Eric, not quite meeting his gaze as he turned back to the brewing stand. The potion was bright red, almost pink, and seemed to glow slightly as Eric swirled it around in the bottle.

“Hey, uh, what is this?” Eric said, looking back up at Tanner. “Healing potion. Don’t worry, I’m not trying to poison you.” He replied, still focused on stand.

A healing potion. Huh. Eric hadn’t even heard of those until he got to the master level, but even then, only the richest parkour masters had them. Plus, the art of brewing potions was considered almost lost. No one that Eric knew even had a brewing stand, except for, well, Tanner.

The parkour fighter’s words rang in his head as Eric carefully uncorked the bottle.

You think it’s a coincidence he has those compasses? Why don’t you ask him where he got them?

But if Tanner was using him, then why would he try to kill him before he got all the discs? Why wouldn’t he just have done it when Eric was passed out? But the pain in his leg was slowly swelling, so before he could change his mind, he took sip.

It tasted vaguely sweet, reminiscent of some fruit he couldn’t name. He had braced himself for a poison effect, but instead, that strange warm and tingly feeling washed over him, putting his whole being at ease. Rather quickly, Eric had drained the whole potion, wiping his mouth as he set the bottle down with a clink. Drowsiness seemed to be crawling in from all angles, and at last he yielded, quickly falling into dreamless sleep.

The pattern continued for what seemed like ages: wake up, take a potion, go to sleep. One time, he even thought he heard Tanner singing softly. But when he saw Eric had woken up, he had stopped abruptly.

This, Eric woke up to silence. It was dark outside again, and Tanner seemed to be sleeping as well. He was propped up against the wall, his face illuminated in moonlight. Despite himself, Eric thought that he might be the most beautiful thing right then. Eventually, Tanner woke up as well, stretching as he stood up.

“Come on,” Tanner said, extending his hand to a very confused looking Eric.

“Come on, what?” he asked. Tanner looked rather uncomfortable as he shifted back and forth, avoiding eye contact.

“Figured you were tired of being cooped up in here.” Tanner shrugged. “The stars are really nice out here.” Eric didn’t know how he knew, but he was right. He hated not being able to move around freely. It was like all his energy was coiled into springs, waiting to be released.

Carefully, Eric got up, making sure to ignore the offer of help in favor of doing it on his own. He steadied himself against the wall, staring expectantly. If his refusal had hurt Tanner, he didn’t show it. Instead, he just motioned for Eric to follow as he stepped out onto the open walkway. Slowly, Eric limped after him. He sat down beside him, their legs dangling over the edge.

The two of them sat there for a while, staring up at the twinkling stars above them. Eric had always dreamed of seeing the stars, but dirt ceilings were all he had until he became a master. But then he had been too busy trying to save parkour civilization. Now nothing was stopping him. Hundreds of thousands of tiny white pinpoints filled the ink black sky, creating a pattern of light amongst the sea of darkness. One large star flew across the sky, leaving behind a trail of stardust. Eric gasped softly at it.

“That’s a shooting star,” Tanner said with a slight smile. “It’s really just a comet, but that’s what people call it. You’re supposed to make a wish when you see one.”

“What did you wish for, then?” Eric asked. Tanner just laughed softly.

“You’re not supposed to tell somebody, or it won’t come true.” Eric shivered in the night breeze, catching Tanner’s eye.

“Are you cold? Hold on.” Tanner ducked back into the house and emerged after a second, holding a bundle of clothes which he tossed at Eric. “I don’t want you getting sick on top of all of this. We’ve already had a large enough set back as it is.”

Eric dutifully started getting changed, stripping his dirty hoodie off in favor of the new clothes. But before he could finish dressed, he saw Tanner frozen in shock. Quickly, he pulled on the clean top and stood as fast as he could.

“Tanner? Hey, Tanner?”

The room was bright white, full of masked men surrounding the operating table. A man lay face down on the table with a gorgeous, massive pair of jet-black wings sprouted from the his back. Tanner approached the table nervously.

“Subject 0121, white male, 21 years old. Standard wing removal. I’ll be here in case something goes wrong, but this is your solo procedure, Doctor Ant. A test to see how you’ll do in the future. Don’t disappoint me.”

d̷̡̻͚̩̣̰͗̅̎̽̀́̕s̸̢̪̻̓̀̕̕̕d̸̡̟̥̝̲̏ć̸̫̱̳̲͖̄̍͐H̵̫̖͔̞͌͋̉̇Ę̷͎̰̜̎̍̇̎̈́̚L̴̗̫̻̫̻̤̉̐̋̋̏̓P̶̥͘̚f̶͓̊̓͝s̷͖̣̳̪̘̬̾͑̄d̵̼̙̔̄m̴̩͎͕͎̍̌͛́͝Ḿ̴̧̘͊̇̂͑͝E̴͓͚͋̒̽͋̓͝͝s̵̞͚͔͕͔͚̲̃̓̐͠͝f̸̯̥̪̦͈̫͓̀ă̸̺͖̻̗͕͚d̷̜̥͚͉̃̽̕͘͝n̴͙͈̹̽ͅ

He had done it, or at least he thought he had. The beautiful wings had been removed, with two long lines of stitches in their place. A wave of relief washed over Tanner.

g̴͎̻̱͍̗͎̈̍ͅn̵͎͋͋͛́͌͗̽G̵͉͚̦̳͔̺̊͒̿̄͑E̷͍̯̖̬̟̎T̸͇͍̬͈͈͐̋̎́e̶̪͍̎̾͘͘͜ͅf̸̡̞̜̞̞̒͛͆̚ṡ̶͎̠̔̔̌e̴̡̦̖̺͇̪̯̋͊̓͋͘M̵̧͍̺̆Ë̶͈́͒̃͒p̸͔̰̠̰̦̤̓̅̇̓͘s̵̤̆ä̶̢͍̩͇́O̷͎͈̻̟̓̄͗͒̂͝U̷͙̠̝͖̣̎͒͆̉͘̚T̸̠̦͓̠̗̻̾̐͗́́͐͘w̴̛̞͚̖̤̠ͅf̴͖͖̘̤͆͗̉͊͊̇̚a̶̲͘

Blood was spurting everyway. The man on the table was screaming. Red flashing lights filled the room. A heavy hand landed on Tanner’s shoulder, pulling him backwards.

“That’s enough, now.”

ã̶͔͙͎̮͈͝d̵̹͆̍s̵̱̤͒̈́̈́̚o̴͕̫͎͒͛͐͜͝ī̴͓̼̻̭͒̚S̸̤͖̾̂̀̀̓͝T̴͍͕̄̍͜͠Ó̴̬̺͇͕̔͝͝P̴̨̠͎͙̞͇̫̑̿̈́ä̶̡́̂s̶̡̤̲͎̬̩̱̅̕f̶̺̲̭̳̰̖͉̒̏́̆̚̚͝s̷̮̱͉̘̰̳̖͂͒̈́͑̏̆̀w̷͎̬̎̎͋͋͛̕é̸̩̻͇̣͇͍͚̋͘

Everything went black.

“Tanner? Hey, Tanner?” Tanner's head shot up. Eric 0̶̛͉́̄̐͂͛̂̒̍̐̀̉̈́̍̕1̸̡̦̬̩̮͔̘̥̭͕̈͆͜͠2̸̭̟̪͎͕͎̿̄̈́́̇́͋́̇͒̕̕͜1̷̜̲͇̰͍̄́̆̾̚ was in his face, staring at him. “You alright, dude?”

Tanner's heart was pounding in his ears. He knew memory wipes were a thing, and he knew there were false memories. But Tanner was sure that what he just saw was real. Seeing certain things could trigger memories to come back, and the two jagged scar lines on Eric’s back certainly seemed to have done that. But that would mean-

No. He wouldn’t have. He couldn’t have. But at the same time, it made sense. Why wouldn’t Eric have been one of his “patients”? He even remembered giving him the false memory. But why did this hurt so much now? Maybe because, despite his best efforts, he liked Eric. How, he didn’t know. But Eric meant something to him in some indescribable way that made knowing the pain he caused so much worse. With each passing day, Tanner thanked god that he wouldn’t be the one to kill Eric in the end.

“Tanner? Come on, man. You there?” Tanner exhaled slowly, trying to ground himself. “Yeah! Yeah. Sorry. Just… zoned out. It’s been a long few days.”

Satisfied, Eric sat back down, patting the cold stone next to him. Tanner stayed standing.

“Hey, uh, weird question. Where’d you get those scars on your back?” Tanner asked. Eric looked mildly surprised, but thankfully not offended or annoyed.

“I don’t know, I guess. They’ve been there as long as I can remember. They don’t seem like birthmarks, though. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious, I suppose.” Tanner shrugged, taking up the offer to sit by Eric’s side. He felt a little more at peace, just by knowing that Eric didn’t remember all the pain he caused him.

But his plan was still in place, and he needed it to happen. He couldn’t think about what would happen to Eric. He had to focus on his mom, his dad, his little sister, his best friend, and everyone else who was wiped out by the Old Man. No amount of shooting stars could change what had to be done.

The two of them sat in silence for a while longer, until Eric turned to him. “What did you wish for with that star?” Tanner just shook his head.

I wished to have more time with you, Tanner thought. I wished for you to know that I really do like you. But he couldn’t say that.

“I already said I won’t tell you.” Tanner rolled his eyes, pretending not to care.

“Come on. You’ve gotta be tired of keeping secrets at some point, right?” Eric reasoned.

You don’t know the half of it, Tanner thought. Still, he had to say something. But before he could think of what to say, he heard a gentle snore. Eric had fallen asleep.

Carefully, Tanner picked him up, bringing him inside the house. He set him down on the makeshift bed and carefully lifted the blankets over him. Tanner sat in his usual spot against the wall and watched Eric. He looked so peaceful, just lying there. And for a moment, Tanner let himself pretend like everything was fine.

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

hope you liked this :)

#fanfic #fanfiction #writing #smallcrow

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balillee · 4 years ago

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tommy's character gets far too much shit.

hi tumblr. i'm gonna need a few bitches to spread this post everywhere, essentially because i want someone, or just tommy really, to see it. so if you really want, you can screenshot it and post it on twitter, reddit, link it everywhere - go absolutely buck wild. i know he reads the VODS comments a lot, but they're chock full of people just insulting him, his character, his writing and everything about his story in the dream smp simply because they don't understand it and because they refuse to acknowledge his character's perspective (mainly because they only care about the pig). reading that many critical comments on something you've created can only make you feel worse about it eventually, and in light of all the awful techno apologist takes on his character, i wanted to basically just word vomit about how wonderfully crafted c!tommy is, as well as compile some other tumblr posts about his character.

there is a massive fuckin community of people who enjoy the character of tommy, because the character is incredible. i myself have made post after post after post commenting on and analysing tommy's character because i find that there's so much to pick apart. but that enthusiasm for his character only seems to be found on tumblr. reddit and twitter seem to hate his character, the VODS seem to be filled with comments from people who only care about techno's perspective (and treat techno as a reliable narrator, which, is the furthest thing from the truth - that guy lies through his teeth all the time), and the smp wiki is a hellscape of godawful takes and mistruths, not even on just tommy's character.

c!tommy is brilliantly acted and brilliantly written, and almost everything he does is either justifiable or has been rectified or admitted as a mistake. you can clearly make connections as to where he got his conclusions from. you feel what his character experiences, as a member of the audience, vividly.

if you look in the more objective sense, c!tommy, and this is especially in the context of him being the youngest character, is a scapegoat. people claim he's awful and destructive when in reality he's a lot less destructive than most characters on the server. a moment that comes to mind is where he diverts schlatt and quackity's attention from pogtopia by breaking part of the flag in manberg, and then replacing it so as to buy tubbo some time - he literally monologues after it about how he doesn't want to destroy but instead rebuild, and how he feels as if nobody else seems to understand that.

his arc in season two was incredible. it was very character driven, and it gave a spotlight to his motivations. at the start we see him in new l'manberg, and he's enjoying his time there, he's skeptical of his friend's presidency, but his main goal is to get back the discs so that he can stop dream and eliminate that threat. he made one screw up that didn't even matter to george, and he paid for it tenfold, even after dream had spent a while with puffy griefing the server and framing it on tommy - what tommy and ranboo did was convinient. then, in exile, we see c!tommy straight up get abused. he's gaslit and conditioned into being c!dream's friend, and in his brain he teaches himself that those acts of abuse are moments of bonding, and it eventually brings him to the point of wanting to end his own life - he's been torn away from his friends and his support system, and nobody will visit him consistently anymore because they only showed him pity, and all he had left was dream, who had hurt him.

but he doesn't die there, because while he didn't understand the full gravity of it back then like he does now, he recognises that dying isn't an escape, and he can beat dream, even if he doesn't know how. so this is where he goes to techno's place, and here's where the fandom starts to misinterpret the situation wildly.

it's the problem similar to when your parents tell you that they're owed something back because you put a roof over their head, despite that being Not How It Works. techno took tommy in and severely mistreated him emotionally. sure, and i understand this, c!techno is a bad communicator who isn't really that empathetic to anyone who isn't phil or wilbur, but that doesn't excuse the blatant lying to c!tommy's face, the guilt tripping, the friendship buying and the degrading. the day before the festival, tommy finally does something violent in his interrogation of fundy, and only then does techno tell him,,,,

that tommy's not equal to him, that techno doesn't respect him all that much, and that they're not friends.

from techno's perspective, and at the time, this was viewed as a positive development in their relationship. oh, he's starting to warm up to tommy! this friendship could really blossom!

no. from a more objective standpoint, what techno has just said to tommy is : 'i respect you only a little bit more now, because while you're starting to act more like me, you're still annoying and a burden.'

and i haven't even touched on the whole 'erasing the words 'Destroy L'manberg' from techno's to-do list' thing, because that instantly refutes the point of 'techno was upfront with his intentions the whole time' - because he wasn't! he may have said it the first time, but you also know what else he did? he repeatedly told tommy that they'd 'air the details out later' whenever the discs were brought up, and from a tommy viewer's perspective at the time, it was framed as if techno was no longer going to do that.

and i also haven't dared touch the 'i would have fought them all for you', because that's major guilt tripping if ever i've seen it.

so, the day of the festival comes, and here's where c!techno and his apologists completely misread c!tommy's thought process, and why he makes the decision he does.

tommy instantly regrets valuing the discs over tubbo, and it's framed as the culmination of tommy having become all the people he said he would never want to be like. and what does he immediately do? he tells tubbo to give up the disc, and he sides with tubbo. he puts his value in his friends, and, by proxy, l'manberg. and when he betrays techno, he tells him 'i'm sorry'.

from a more objective standpoint, tommy's time with techno is him valuing the discs over almost anything else. so, in leaving techno to be with tubbo again, he is valuing people above the discs. so when, on doomsday, techno says his 'discs aren't people' line, what he doesn't realise is that he himself fueled tommy's valuing of discs above people when attempting to fuel tommy's vengeance against tubbo and l'manberg. techno doesn't realise that he was an unhealthy presence for tommy, and an even worse influence.

what techno also doesn't seem to understand is that tommy never hated tubbo or l'manberg - tommy recognises, now at least, that his exile wasn't a product of tubbo, but a product of dream's manipulation, likely in part because at the time, especially with dream lying about tommy blowing up the community house, tommy was the only one who could see it because he had experienced it firsthand. so when techno sides with dream, it's like kicking tommy in the teeth.

and i want to mention that betraying someone doesn't necessarily make the person who was betrayed good, or in the right, or even justified, because tommy was entirely justified to leave techno. you know who else was betrayed? schlatt. but i don't see many schlatt apologists around angry at quackity for joining the rebellion.

tommy stole the axe of peace? good. it was a moment of tommy defining his self-worth, instead of having it defined by others. gone is the age of c!techno belittling him and deciding how much c!tommy should be respected. NEXT!

here's a moment i wanted to talk about that will forever be funny to me.

'i am a person.'

techno's very famous line from doomsday. techno says to tommy that discs aren't people, and that tommy should value people, despite not understanding that by leaving techno, he did just that. and what does tommy say in return, which has been omitted from every c!tommy-critical analysis, and every animatic?

'yes you are, but so are we.'

an acknowledgement of techno's hurt, to which tommy has already apologised for. a statement that says 'your hurt does not excuse, nor justify, the hurt you have inflicted onto us.' an acknowledgement that tommy has already learnt the lesson techno seems to be trying to 'teach' him. but you can't teach him anything by destroying.

c!tommy has had almost everything he has ever owned or built either taken from him or destroyed. ranboo even points out that the only two things of tommy's left standing are his house and his hotel, and if i'm honest, his house is dissheveled. it's a labyrinth of terror due only to how many times it's been torn apart. l'manberg being blown up didn't teach anyone anything about anarchy, or about valuing people over possessions. logstedshire being blown up didn't teach tommy to be obedient.

i could honestly ramble for ages about how nuanced tommy's character is and how much depth and complexity there is to his character's process and his relationship with others, but more than that, c!tommy is forgiving. he invites almost everyone who hates him to the grand opening of his hotel - if that isn't an indicator that he just wants friends, and not to be treated like the embodiment of evil, then i don't know what is. he holds grudges, but he doesn't really actively hate anyone, other than c!dream. but, we'll let him. c!dream deserves nothing but to be pummeled into the floor.

tommy doesn't spoonfeed his character nuance, and he doesn't really spell it out for his audience. he'll mention things like trauma and triggers in passing, but a lot of analysis on his motivations has to be picked up from what is said in passing or from what can be seen in between the lines.

i'd be here for hours if i were to talk about everything i love about c!tommy, because honestly he's one of my favourite characters, and there are so many angles you can look at his character from in terms of his age, his relationships with others, his motivations, his personality, his character arcs etc etc. so instead of doing that, i'm going to compile some much more specific analysis posts below to skim through because they highlight so many good aspects of his character.

^^ A thread about the 'yes you are, but so are we' line.

^^ About how shit the VODS comments are.

^^ A comment on how c!Tommy is actually pretty peaceful, and is actually less destructive than most characters on the server.

^^ Possibly the best c!Tommy analysis thread I've ever seen in relation to his trauma, which gives multiple perspectives.

^^ About how c!Tommy is treated as a scapegoat, and how, from an objective standpoint, he is no more violent than any other character, it's just that the little violence that is committed is blown far out of proportion.

^^ Tumblr user flypaw being a bad bitch, as per usual.

^^ c!Tommy being incredibly intelligent, and talking about wanting to rebuild and not destroy. A very underrated monologue of his.

^^ Something short about c!Tommy and c!Wilbur's relationship in Pogtopia.

^^ Less about c!Tommy, more a meta on L'Manberg. Really interesting to think about.

^^ A take on Doomsday.

I'll add some more posts in a reblog in the notes, but if anyone's post(s) is on this and they want me to take it off, let me know and I'll do that for you! Feel free to add your own banger c!Tommy takes or ones that you've found.

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cheesesteakphil · 3 years ago

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IT’S FEBRUARY 28TH YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS

IT’S RARE DISEASE DAY!! YAHOOOOOOO!!!!!!

I’ve done this once before, but that was YEARS ago and my following has doubled since then SO! I make a new post! Except I’m typing it out instead of drawing because I did NOT plan ahead for this like I was supposed to!

So! The day itself, The purpose of rare disease day is to bring awareness to rare diseases and help access to medical treatment and representation for individuals that need it, and gives folk an opportunity to educate people on some of these rare diseases and share the experiences they’ve had.

You can learn more about the day itself HERE

I got an interview for first hand experience and knowledge about a rare disease! Under the read more will be a (very long! Sorry!) education lesson about it. TW’s for eye related talk, hospital/medical talk and general biology stuff.

Hey Hello there is no interview it’s totally just me. I interviewed myself in the form of writing this and using my brain to remember things. I’ll be going through all the technical medical stuff first and then I’ll get to my personal experience.

I have Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension.

A quick breakdown of those individual words for you:

Idiopathic - Relating to or denoting any disease or condition which arises spontaniously or for which the cause in unknown

Intracranial - Within the Skull. In ya noggin. Brain case. You get it.

Hypertension - Abnormally high blood pressure.

Put those together and the official definition is this: “Idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) is a disorder related to high pressure in the brain. It causes signs and symptoms of a brain tumor. It is also sometimes called pseudotumor cerebri or benign intracranial hypertension.” [1] - This ananotated site also is the best for learning about IIH, if you don’t want to listen to me talk about my own experience/non-doctor type breakdown of it :)

The symptoms of IIH can present as the following:

- Blurry vision or Double vision, and in extreme cases, vision loss (especially in the peripheral vision)

- Dizzyness/nausea

- Vomiting

- Neck Stiffness

- Frequent headaches and/or Migranes

- Tinnitus (persistent ringing in the ears)

- Forgetfullness

- Depression

First thing that’s done is eye tests, specifically to check the back of the eye using retinal imaging (a big camera flashbangs you basically, it sucks.) to view the retina, optic disc (funky spot that holds the nerve) and blood vessels.

This is followed by Brain imaging with either an MRI or a CT scan to detect if there are any tumors present or anything else that could be causing the symptoms (plot twist, IIH is just your brain playing a funny prank to trick doctors into looking like you have a brain tumor when really, there’s nothing there)

After an MRI comes back clean, the next step is a Lumbar puncture (also called a spinal tap), to withdraw a sample of CSF (Cerebrospinal fluid - the juice that your brain sits in that’s also in your spine). This is to check the pressure in your spine and skull. The typical CSF opening pressure in an adult will range from 10-20 cmH2O.

Though a direct cause for IIH occuring is unknown, the CSF pressure is what’s responsible for the symptoms, high pressure in the skull can press against the optic nerve at the back of the eyes, resulting in the potential vision loss or blurred/double vision.

Treatments for IIH will vary depending on the severity of the case, but can include weight loss, medicine such as diuretics to filter excess fluid out of the body, having frequent spinal taps to remove excess fluid and reduce pressure, or having a shut surgically placed in the brain to drain fluid.

Now that I’ve fried your brain with all that medical text book wordage, I will let u in on my fun little tale of my relationship with IIH.

Which starts with me breaking my glasses lmao.

I was in university, I woke up one morning, and I got out of bed and stood directly on my glasses that were on the floor. So I thought ‘fuck ok well I might as well go get an eye test if I need new glasses anyway’ so I stumble my way into town and the optician was so empty they just took me in for an eye test straight away. And they had recently gotten upgraded equiptment to capture detailed imaging of your eyes to detect if there are any health issues that could be imparing sight, and so snap snap I get flashbanged with camera lights and they discovered that some of the blood vessles in the back of my eyeballs were burst, so he wrote a note, and sent me straight to the ER.

I get there, they look me over, do some standard eye tests and send me up to Opthamology (eye doctors) who read the note and send me straight to Neurology (brain doctors) who put me straight in the metal magnet tube (MRI). And as well as confirming that I do definitely have a brain, there is also 100% no tumors hiding in the brain wrinkles either. After that they slap me with the diagnosis and book me in for a spinal tap the next day. Now I mentioned what the average pressure should be for spinal fluid (between 10-20 cmH2O ), and mine was something around 25 cmH2O, which was the very bottom base line for IIH diagnosis, so by all account, I’m thankfully an incredibly mild case.

Another fun fact that contributed to my mildness is that I am totally asymptomatic. I haven’t experienced any of those symptoms I listed except tinnitus, but I’ve had that for as long as I can remember, so it wasn’t a symptom from the IIH. (Also certain I’ve had depression before the IIH too but w/e w/e not important they didn’t check me for that anyway)

Thankfully, this all lead to me only ever needing the one spinal tap during diagnosis, and I’m on a low dose of Acetazolomide medication which I can be taken off of once I lose some more weight :) I did used to see an Opthamologist and a Neurologist (I MISS YOU DR.BATHGATE U WERE SO COOL) regularly while I was still at uni but that stopped once I finished in 2018 and moved back home because the hospital in my city is shit and never actually picked up my referral. But tbh the constant hospital visits were not having the best effect on my mental health so it’s a bit of a tricky situation.

I’ve always made a point to be very open about this, so that I can educate those that are unaware or misinformed (I’ve even had to tell a few GP doctors about it!) and I am always open to any questions people have, be it about the diagnostic process or my own experience, and I highly encourage sharing the knowledge! It is still a widely unknown disorder and my hope is that shining enough light on these conditions will help give rare diseases the boost they need both in public awareness and to advance medical research.

If you made it this far into the post, a BIG BIG THANK YOU! This day obviously means a lot to me, and the fact that you took the time to read all those words for me means even more! Please feel free to share this post around if you want, and maybe take the time to read a bit more about Rare Disease Day (once again, that link is here)

Ty Ty have a wonderful day! :)

#Dr. Phils' therapy talk session #iih #rare disease day #medical talk #ok to rb

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scathecraw · 4 years ago

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BBRae Week 2021 - Day 1: Unconventional Kiss

Raven had been dancing around the issue for weeks now, and both she and Gar knew it. There had been a few near misses after a date gone well, a few breathless close calls during training, and one precipitous moment in the kitchen that fell apart when the smoke detector signaled their distraction.

They had been good dates. Very good dates, to be quite honest. Raven had expected that they would go nearly that well, and that had been why she had held off for so long. With all the emotional vulnerability and insightful talks and fantastic company and so many other things that came with dating someone you had been attracted to for years, she knew that the other shoe would drop, and she would have to just plunge in headfirst. And Gar had been patient – he wasn’t one to rush, especially with her. But he wanted it. And, god help her, she wanted it, too.

A perfect first kiss. The First Kiss, for both of them, hung up on each other for so long that they had never made any real attempts to find anyone else. Kori’s magazines had promised that the first kiss was always awkward and had to be refined by, hrm,repeated practice, but that was only a small part of the fear that gripped Raven when she thought of actually, really putting lips to lips.

It wasn’t Gar. She fully expected him to be just as bad as she was for a while (and likely longer given how quick she could pick things up). It wasn’t even what might… come after. Not as such. It was just… just… it was Important. Capital “I” Important – that things go well. Despite the promise of a bad first kiss by seemingly everyone who had ever kissed, it had to go right. Too wet or too dry, wrong head tilt, wrong duration, whatever – but she wanted to kiss him and do it over and over again and what if he didn’t want to or what if there was no chemistry or what if she sneezed or got so nervous she vomited or any number of things that would, according to all her latest nightmares, put him off wanting her the way she wanted him.

And he seemed so damn blithe about it. Like he couldn’t be less worried, even though she had felt his pulse race and could practically hear his internal monologue turning into a full blown soliloquy. He had that placid smile and those sparkling eyes and smelled like warmth and pine and it was so stupid how he wouldn’t just admit how nervous he was so they could be nervous together.

No, she had to be the mature one and feel all the butterflies for them both. She could practically hear his corny joke about never getting butterflies because he was vegetarian. Stupid Gar and stupid kissing.

It would happen. She would make it happen. And it wouldn’t be perfect, or probably even a very good kiss, but it would be right. Eventually.

____

There was an awful lot of noise and fleeing civilians for an evening out, even at the pier.

Nightwing sighed from atop his favorite ride at the boardwalk, the Ferris Wheel, as he retrieved his communicator and alerted the team. “Titans, we’ve got work to do. Something big is causing trouble at the east entrance. Star and I are on our way and will meet you there.” With that, he stood up in the precariously rocking carriage and Starfire lifted him by the arms, taking off in the direction of the disturbance. Cyborg, heretofore incognito on a date, immediately excused himself and waded through the crowds, shedding his holo-disguise. He was alerted to his passing teammates by a green blur, and called out to Raven as she passed, asking for a ride on one of her ink-black levitating discs. She obliged and they took off after Changeling’s racing avian form.

Gar was the fastest one to respond in these situations. Superhuman reactions and mobility got him to the trouble faster than any of his teammates, and he was proud of it. It meant that he was the first one to engage the enemy, which was a dangerous gambit when he didn’t know what the enemy was, but someone had to be first on the line when every second was a danger to innocent people. In this case, it was more an annoyance than any real threat. Kitten was throwing a very public and destructive temper tantrum, as she tended to do within a few weeks of release/escape.

Her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Fang, was nearby and suffering the brunt of the auditory assault while a swarm of mutated grubs ate their way through stalls and prizes alike. Kitten was waving the control device as she gesticulated wildly, and the chance to end the whole debacle in one fell swoop was too tempting.

Without waiting for backup or giving away his presence, Changeling darted forward as a seagull, beak agape as he neared the remote. He had timed it perfectly, if not for Fang’s suddenly outstretched spiderleg. The blow sent him tumbling into a pile of cheap stuffed animals and he transformed back into himself. The arguing couple immediately turned their ire on him without ever stopping their argument.

“And now look what you’ve done! Your stupidity got this idiot involved! Why couldn’t you just win me a stupid teddy bear like a normal boyfriend?” Kitten raged as she hammered at the controller, causing the grubs to turn their attention towards the dazed and prone Changeling. Fang launched webbing at him, working at cross purposes as the grubs and giving Changeling just enough time to roll out of the way.

“This is not my fault. You know these games are rigged! Why would I give the money I stole to these scam artists?”

“Because you are supposed to! It’s what boyfriends do! They do stupid stuff because I want you TO!” Kitten screamed and threw her remote onto the ground where it cracked and fizzled. Instead of the expected de-metamorphosis from vicious gnawing grubs to harmless caterpillars, there was a rumbling from deep inside the snack stall and a mass exodus of larvae from the vicinity. Gar had just gotten to his feet when a much larger, toothier, and more armored wriggler burst from the shoddy wooden confines, writhing and shrieking even more shrilly than Kitten, and headed directly towards her and Fang in a headlong charge.

Apparently Kitten’s shouting was enough to distract both of them from their imminent death by squirming tank, and Changeling had to make a tough split-second decision – let them suffer the consequences of their own stupidity, or put himself in harm’s way to save them.

It wasn’t much of a choice. Leaping forward, he transformed into a rhino, a fast moving locomotive of heavy armor and muscle and slammed headfirst into the tank sized larva, diverting it and being whipped aside by the unexpected followthrough of the tail end of the grub.

Raven’s disk touched down just in time to see his head collide with a thick support post that held up the boardwalk, and the sounds of argument fell silent as Kitten and Fang wordlessly assessed the situation and fled. Cyborg called out “Get B. I’ll get the worm,” and launched after the creature.

Raven raced to Garfield’s side, seeing the heavy gash and road rash from sliding across the wood. She assessed him as quickly as possible, noting the broken ribs, bleeding, and, most concerning, the lack of breathing. She channeled her power, reaching her soulself into the unmoving shapeshifter on the ground, and urgently repaired his most vital injuries.

The head wound would wait, they always bled more and looked worse than they were. First the broken ribs, eased out and stabilized enough to hold for a little while. Then the badly punctured lung. As the trapped air was removed and the hole patched, she expected him to cough, sit up, and make a dumb joke. Instead he just lay there, silent. His pulse was fine, and there was no reason for him to be so still.

She did all the steps that the Titans’ first aid training laid out for her, making sure his airway was clear, no pressure preventing his breathing or hidden wounds that would cause more damage, then started mouth to mouth.

It only took a few breaths, as if his body had simply not realized for some seconds that he was able to breathe normally again, before the first unassisted rasps began. Raven let out a sob of relief, feeling like his breath resuming was directly connected to her own oxygen. She continued healing him, clearing his head of blood and strengthening the broken ribs before his eyes opened with a groan.

“Did ya get the license of that truck that hit me?” he said, weakly.

Raven nearly hit him. “That was by far the stupidest thing I have ever seen you do. What were you thinking, charging in like that?”

“Aww c’mon, Rae. I had ta’. And I’m sure you’ve seen me do stupider things.”

“None of them had you puncture a lung and stop breathing, you fool. You didn’t need emergency resuscitation when you tried to do a standing backflip.” A jolt of power zapped him with an icicle of cold to the chest, and he coughed.

“At least I stuck the landing this time, heh. I think I can sit up. Thanks for fixing me up, Doctor Rae.”

She glared, and kept glaring as Nightwing checked in. Fang and Kitten had been apprehended almost peacefully by him and Starfire, and Cyborg had incapacitated the grub easily. She reported the situation, not once taking her eyes off her idiot of a boyfriend.

He rolled to his feet, only a little gingerly, and retrieved the broken pieces of the remote control for Cyborg to repair and reverse the changes to the swarm.

As he stooped down to pick up the last pieces, he stopped, and a look of realization dawned on him.

“Wait, you gave me CPR? Like, mouth-to-mouth?”

“Of course. You weren’t breathing and you needed oxygen before any working brain cells died.”

“Y’know,” he said, sitting back down beside her, “I think that counts as our first kiss.”

Raven went still. It couldn’t. It wasn’t even a kiss, it was legitimate medical treatment. But then again, it wasn’t very good, it was at a weird angle, and there was even the terrible fear that she’d vomit out of worry. It checked all the boxes for the perfect terrible first kiss.

He interrupted her musing, “Too bad I don’t remember it. Maybe we could see if trying again might jog some memories.” He reached his arm across her shoulders, waggling his eyebrows.

“Oh shut up,” she said, and pulled him in for a completely butterfly-free second first kiss.

AO3 FF.net

#bbraeweek21 #bbrae #day 1 #fic

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deerixiie · 4 years ago

Text

APPRECIATION POST!!

june 29th, or a little more that 6 months ago i posted my first fic. that was honestly the best decision of my life because tho tumblr is a hellsite it’s a hellsite that got me through a hellish year. i just want to come out and express my extreme gratitude for all of the people who have gotten me through 2020.

my followers. i remember when i first hit 100 and i was so excited bc 100 ppl in the world actually appreciated my writing enough to follow me...and then more of you guys started coming and sent sweet asks and suddenly i felt so loved 🥺 i didn’t expect to gain the following i did on this hellsite but i did and i love you guys so much :( thank u so much for being here through it all and making this year so much better!!

character anons/other anons; i know i don’t have much and not all of u are active but you!!! you guys are the bestest people on earth!!! shoyo, haji, yams, and all my noya anons,,, i love u guys sm. seeing you in my inbox made me so happy and i loved interacting w you 🥺💗 i hope you guys have an amazing new year and i hope you can talk more soon!! same goes for my other anons, 💜, 🍁, iara, and all the other anons that have send me asks, i love you guys so much!! getting anons and asks was something that made me feel so appreciated and important and seeing your asks always made my day!! ily guys <3

@sa-suga, @neonghxst, @sanso, @starrysamu, @stelleum, @myelocin, and a whole bunch of others writers; you are the most amazing people on the planet. writing on a site like this that gives little to no appreciation is so amazing of you :( your fics have made me smile, laugh, cry, and even grow as a person and i’m so grateful for that! bc of u i was able to distract myself from all the crappy things that happened this year. ily guys so much!

and now, my mutuals!!

@hajiimes; cola i will always always start with you. my closest friend, writing genius, someone i can bounce ideas off of, ask for help, watch movies with, voice call for hours with, and simp over characters with. getting close with you was one of the best things of this year and i really appreciate you for it. its really refreshing to have such a close friend i can really turn to and talk to about stuff that’s bothering me and i know i do it a lot and i’m a terrible friend sometimes but you’re always there for me :( and yeah we tease each other a lot and you’re honestly so annoying sometimes but yeah it’s fun and i love you so <3 STOP MAKING BREAKUP PLAYLISTS OKAY IM SORRY

@sugakuns + @suikazura + @kageyuji + @miyasangel + @giorvanna + @sophiawithstars + @hajiimes; i literally could not have gotten through 2020 without dinonet. it’s the first discord server and probably only discord server that i’ve really felt at home in because you all are so accepting and sweet. your support and love and kindness have gotten me past this year. i’ve been able to laugh and scream and vent and word vomit and be myself because of you all and i’m so appreciative of that. i cant wait for an entire new year with you all, ilysm!

@mehreya; you changed your url and i freaked tf out but ANYWAYS HEYYY~ rae i literally. i literally love you so much like. where would i be without you? you’re so welcoming and comforting and i love you so much :( if there’s anyone i’d share a deformed braincell with, it’s with you!! i feel like i can relate to you?? so much?? i literally keysmash in your inbox sending like 12 messages and i don’t have to worry about you getting upset because you do the same thing right back. we share really similar interests and you’re so compassionate and sweet and ugh i’m gna cry ily

@suikazura; bae i. how do i even say this. you’re literally the kindest, sexiest, funniest, loveliest person i’ve ever met. when i had a really bad day and broke down you were there to hype me up and tell me such wonderful things that i still think about all the time. you wrote a poem comparing me to the sun. ME?? THE SUN?? sui i don’t even know where to go with this ive never had someone do that for me and you doing that just makes me tear up and i’m tearing up writing this- and i love your humor so much despite the fact that it haunts me to this day and your art is so pretty and i could look at it for hours. like man i can’t believe someone like you exists i don’t deserve you at ALL. ilysm bubs

@cavalree; AZZIE WE HAVENT EVEN TALKED THAT MUCH BUT OUR CONVERSATION YESTERDAY WAS >>> THIS IS ME SAYING WE SHOULD TALK MORE WE HAVE A LOT IN COMMON

@fairyoomi + @luvromis + @rilacry; we’ve been moots for So Long but i have no idea what to talk about w u so i get intimidated and don’t talk :( ily guys so much though, you’re really sweet and kind and your humor is literally top tier. this is so weird to say but reading ur self-ship posts makes me so happy bc i feel like i can be open about my self-ship too,, it rlly comforts me and makes me feel loved hehe. i miss talking to u guys even though it was barely anything and i rlly hope 2021 is the year we get closer!!

@sophiashortcake + @star-puff + @kurooskult; we’ve recently become mutuals but i love your vibes!! i really hope i get to interact with you more next year so we can become closer <3

@bunx; BIG SIS!! literally i feel so bad for not talking to u because you’re literally the blueprint :( i just don’t know what to talk about and then get all freaked out XBSKSJD i’ve stared at your disc so many times debating what to say cbsjs but anyway thank you so much for being here from the beginning! i know for a fact ill wouldnt be where i am today w/out u 🥺 ilysm bubs

other moots that made this year so much more beautiful i want to get closer too!: @haikoo, @4fterh0urs, @run-004, @sugasugawarau, @s4ijoh, @gg9183, @baeshijima 🥺💗💗, @kozu-mei , @kaguol ily all so so much, you all are such amazing ppl and i hope we get to talk more!!

#important broadcasts #i love you all a lot #i don’t know where i’d be without your support and love #it’s been such a crazy year but it’s been so much better w u

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starrywhump · 4 years ago

Note

Hi can you post more Nico angst Maybe some stripping, gagging, tying up, etc

Thanks for the ask! Here is some Nico angst, it’s very much emotionally whumpy as well as the physical aspect. Please excuse typos I’m a terrible proofreader. Hope y’all enjoy!

First | Previous | Next

Nico shivered, he could still feel Rhea’s hands on him. She had left hours ago, after thoroughly enjoying the final break of Nico’s defiance. But he could still feel her hands invading his space. He scratched at his neck, trying to get rid of the feeling of her touch. It didn’t help.

Nico was the cleanest he had been since he was captured, but he felt dirtier than ever. A disgusting layer of humiliation laid on his skin. He had to do it, he knew that. He wasn’t just going to let Rhea shoot Ash, but his just blatant obedience made him sick.

Even worse than that, he cried, he let Rhea get to him. He felt like vomiting at the thought. He tried to tell himself that just because he submitted to Rhea’s will this one time, it didn’t mean he gave up, but it sure felt like the beginning of the end.

More and more the little voice in his head told him how much easier it would be to just stop fighting.

Nico dug his fingers into his neck, focusing his mind on the dull stinging left in the wake of his fingernails. It helped a little.

“N-Nico?” Ash’s voice was weak, it barely traveled across the cell to where Nico was sitting.

Nico got up quickly, moving to sit next to Ash in the middle of the floor, “Right here,” he said softly.

Ash smiled weakly, dried blood around his lips cracked a bit as his skin moved.

Right after Rhea had left earlier, Nico had, with some difficulty, untied Ash’s hands. But even now he wasn’t restrained Ash could barely move. Nico didn’t know the full extent of his injuries, but he looked pretty horrible.

“you... ‘k?” it seemed to take a lot of effort for Ash to get the words out.

Nico scoffed, “I don’t think I’m the person to be worrying about right now.”

Ash laughed, or tried to, it came out more as weak cough. He winced at the movement.

“Are you... what’s wrong?” Nico’s voice was filled with concern.

Ash shook his head, unable to speak through his spluttering coughs. Red flecks became clear on his lips.

“You need to be upright come on,” Nico spoke firmly, not letting his worries show in his voice.

Ash didn’t seem to hear him, his eyes were filled with panic as he tried to get a moment to breathe.

Nico carefully put a hand under Ash’s head to support him as he lifted him to a sitting position.

Ash’s eyes squeezed closed as Nico pulled him up.

He collapsed forward onto Nico's shoulder, blood trickling out of his mouth onto Nico’s shirt.

Nico knew he should try to say something to comfort his friend. He opened his mouth but couldn't think of the right words.

Ash’s breath was ragged, desperately trying to get air into his lungs.

"Shushh, just... it's ok. Just- just try to breathe, slowly,” Nico’s tone came out more awkward than comforting.

"t-trying.." Ash stuttered out.

"It's gonna b-"

Nico was interrupted as the door to their cell swung open.

"Awww, what a pair of darlings," Rhea cooed.

Nico bit his cheek, stopping himself from instantly snapping at her. For Ash's sake he couldn't, if he did something to make her mad it would only hurt him. He couldn’t let her get to him.

"He needs a doctor."

"Well he's still alive so he can't need one that bad," Rhea stepped into the room, letting the door close behind her.

"He's coughing up blood, that's not good. He needs a doctor." Nico grit his teeth, trying to keep himself from yelling.

Rhea pondered for a minute before shrugging, "Well I have three of you, if it's really that bad, he isn't integral to my little experiments."

"You're fucking sick," Nico growled.

A groan from Ash cut off their conversation, more blood spilled from his mouth. Nico felt Ash’s body go slack in his grip, passing back out.

Rhea moved on, ignoring him, “Today is a particularly special day. I have a nice little surprise for you all."

Nico's heart dropped, he knew that Rhea's words could mean nothing good.

Rhea reached to her belt for her radio, "bring it in please."

No no whatever it is keep it the fuck away.

“You should be excited,” Rhea smiled.

Nico wrapped his arms protectively around Ash, “I’m not.”

Rhea gave him an exaggerated pout. She opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by a knock at the cell door.

The door creaked open and one of Rhea’s men, carrying some kind of metal tool and what looked like a car battery. Rhea watched with excitement as he set his armful down, she gave the guard a nod towards Nico, “put him back up on the wall please.”

Nico’s chest clenched. The last thing he wanted was to be chained up away from Ash, unable to stop Rhea from doing whatever she wanted to his friend.

The guard nodded and made his way towards Nico, grabbing him roughly by the back of the shirt.

“Wait! Wait, let me let him down, so he doesn’t fall.” Nico felt a pang of humiliation rush through his body, his voice sounded dangerously close to a beg.

The guard paused, looking up to Rhea. She nodded silently with an amused smirk.

Nico put his hand back behind Ash’s head as he lowered him back to the ground.

As soon as Ash’s back was against the floor the guard pulled at Nico’s collar.

Nico elbowed back at the guard, “Just wait a second!” he growled.

Nico managed to push Ash to his side, albeit a bit rougher than he would have wished for, at least he wasn’t going to choke on his own blood.

With a yank from the man behind him, Nico was forced to his feet. He was slammed back into the wall, the air knocked from his lungs.

Nico coughed violently as the guard grabbed and fastened his wrists into the cuffs above him. Nico was still gasping to regain his breathe when the guard stepped away.

Rhea dismissed the man with a silent wave, leaving Nico and Ash alone with just her.

She turned to fiddle with what the guard had brought in. From this new vantage point, Nico could clearly see Rhea’s newest implement of grief. But he still couldn’t exactly tell what it was. One piece of it was a large battery, a cord ran from the battery to a metal rod, about as long as his forearm, there was a flat disc of metal at the end of the rod.

Rhea held the rod by its black handle, she turned slightly to adjust something on the other side of the battery.

As she twisted Nico could see the bottom of the disc, in risen metal letters he could make out the words “Property of Rhea” with a small heart underneath.

His eyes widened in horror as he realized what it was, “No! No... you can’t be serious!”

Rhea flipped a switch on the battery, and a faint buzzing filled the room, “What a smart boy you are, figuring it out all by himself. Though I am disappointed I didn’t get to tell you all about it myself.”

“You-” Nico stopped the insults from rolling off his tongue, if he wanted any chance of this not happening he couldn’t make her angry.

“If- If- the cops ever saw it they’ll know your name, you can’t-”

“Do you really think I have only one? And even if this was my real name, without a last name it's practically useless.”

no no no no no no.

Nico’s mind was racing, there was no way this was happening, this couldn’t be happening.

Rhea placed the brand on the floor, walking over to Nico, “I know, it’s a lot, it’s scary, but I know you can do it,” she ran a hand through Nico’s hair.

Nico jerked his head to the side, there was nowhere far enough to escape her touch.

Rhea smiled at him, a warm smile that may have even been comforting in different circumstances, “It needs a few minutes to warm up, and after that, it will be over before you know it.”

“You- you can’t fucking brand me,” Nico tried to stop from stuttering.

“Language Nico, you had been doing so well.”

Rhea released his hair, she took a few steps back to look at both boys, “So who wants to go first.”

shit shit SHIT.

Nico hadn’t even thought of Ash. He mentally kicked himself for being so selfish, worrying about himself when Ash was over there passed out on the floor.

“You can’t do that to him now.”

“I can do whatever I want, both of you are getting it today.”

“Look at him! You almost killed him he can’t handle anything else! He’s already coughing up blood you can’t fuc-” Nico stopped himself, “you can’t burn him on top of all that.”

“Hmmm,” Rhea made a mockery of thinking it over, “last I checked you don’t get to say what I can’t do.”

Nico felt hopeless, there was nothing he could do, nothing except, “What do you want me to do?”

Rhea gave him a questioning look.

“There’s always something you want from me. Something I haven’t done yet that you want me to do. I’m the one you can’t break, can’t get to do what you want. Well, I will now, what will it take for you to leave him alone?” Nico’s breathing quickened anticipating whatever horror he had just signed himself up for.

“Well,” Rhea’s face spread into a grin, “that is a delicious proposition. So you’ll be branded? And do whatever I want?”

“If you leave him alone.”

“He’s going to get it later on anyway. Is all that pain, the humiliation, is it really worth it?”

Nico knew it was. He wanted to help Ash. This would take away the one real thing Rhea hadn’t been able to steal. She could beat him and cut him however much she wanted but there was no way to force his obedience. Now he was bartering it away for a temporary save.

“He goes to a hospital too.”

Rhea gave an exasperated shake of her head, “I can’t do that, you-”

“Then medical care, at least- it can be here. This is obviously some kind of criminal base or something and you must have a hospital or medical center. Ash gets the care he needs, nicely, with pain meds and stuff not as another way for you to torment him.”

“You really think of everything don’t y-”

“And Hazel, she gets it as well. Both of them, fixed up, and out of pain.”

Nico wracked his brain trying to think of anything else he could ask for. The more panicked he got the harder it was for him to think.

Rhea paused as if thinking it over, “I suppose... I might agree, but it would have to be very enticing to be worth it.”

“What do you want me to do?” Nico repeated.

“Submit, fully. Do what I say, beg when I ask, no fighting, no cursing, no attitude. The second you slip up the deal’s off.”

Nico tilted his head up to try and stop tears slipping out of his eyes, his voice shook slightly, “I won’t slip up.”

“Well,” Rhea turned back to the brand, “good then, as long as you keep being good, they will receive medical attention, they won’t be hurt. I expect your very best behavior and your active participation, can you do that?”

Nico nodded.

Rhea held the brand, turning back to Nico and raising an eyebrow expectantly.

Nico realized his mistake, “yes ma’am,” he corrected himself.

Rhea didn’t look satisfied.

What did she want?

Nico’s lungs felt tight, it dawned on him what she wanted, “Please, uh... please do it,” he could barely force out the words, “brand me.”

“You can do better than that.”

Nico took in a stuttering breath, “please, please I want you to... it would uh- make me happy, please Rhea please brand me.”

Nico let the words tumble out of his mouth reminding himself over and over he didn’t mean it.

Rhea nodded, smiling she stepped toward Nico with the brand. With one hand she traced her fingers along the hem of Nico’s shirt, gently lifting it up to expose his bare torso.

“Hold this,” Rhea pushed the fabric into one of Nico’s cuffed hands.

“Yes ma’am,” Nico took it quickly, the tee-shirt now covering his view of Rhea. He was breathing fast and heavy, having a hard time getting enough oxygen.

Waiting for it to happen felt worse than-

That thought was quickly disproven as the red hot metal met his ribcage.

He wasn’t sure if he screamed or not, he probably did.

Everything just whited out for Nico, his vision, hearing, all just white, blinding pain.

Worse than anything Nico had ever felt before.

It felt like an eternity before the blind white screen faded back to Rhea’s face in front of him.

Now he could tell he was screaming.

His throat burned as he cried out, gasping for air.

Rhea held Nico’s tee shirt up, Nico must have dropped it in his surprise, she was murmuring reassurances Nico couldn’t hear over his own sounds of pain.

Finally, Rhea pulled the brand off of Nico, it pulled on his skin eliciting a yelp from her captive.

Nico was breathing hard as he tried to regain his composure.

It hurt.

It hurt so incredibly bad.

All thoughts of strength or regaining his dignity were gone from Nico’s head.

Broken sobs came from the boy as he tried to get through it.

“Shushhh, good job darling, good job,” Rhea’s hands were in his hair again but Nico barely felt it.

His side felt like it was on fire, his tee-shirt brushing against it was unbearable.

“Tell me what you feel,” Rhea’s voice dripped with a sick fascination.

Nico barely processed what she said, he looked up at her confused.

“Tell me what you feel,” Rhea repeated more slowly.

Nico knew he had to, had to give his complete cooperation.

“H-hu-hurts,” Nico struggled to talk between sobs.

“Mmmm I know, I know it hurts darling, but you did so good.”

Nico was limp in her hands as Rhea maneuvered his head to rest on her shoulder, “You did so good for me, don’t worry.”

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themysteryofwriting · 4 years ago

Text

Masterpost

Sanders Sides OneShots

What Happened Before Accepting Anxiety - what I think happened that caused Virgil to sink out

The Creativity Split -my interpretation of the Split. Warning for slight U!Pat and gaslighting

Analogical Clothes Prompt - some fluffy Analogical with Logan stealing Virgil’s clothes

Moceit No Mom prompt - fluffy Moceit prompt with a bit of demiboy Patton or Patton in a skirt where Patton is oblivious til the end

Royality short Pat prompt - no further explanation needed

Can’t You See It - Analogical One Shot. Virgil wants the others to know about how loving Logan is...and that he’s a giant memelord. Is that so bad? Hints of background Roceit And Remus being himself

Who say you have to leave your past behind you - my first one shot with Rachel. Some stuff has changed about her since this but it has a special place in my heart. Hinted at Past U!Pat and Remus being himself. Dee speaks in lies ofc.

This is the Worst Ending - oh boy. okay this is what I call my angst :tm: If you are senstive to any of the following: don’t read Unsympathetic Patton, multiple major character deaths, blood, Sayori like scene, string imagery, gore, depression, brainwashing, emotional manipulation,murder, strangulation, eating disorder(kinda), stabbing, gaslighting There was a part 2 but......it didn’t last long, i wasn’t proud of it

Puppet!Ray Origins - the first part of my fnaf au! (i literally only have this part and the end so far). Warnings for U!Pat (he’s Afton), along with child death. However some cute Logan and Ray interactions

Puppet!Ray: End of Everything: continuation of FNAF AU. This time the Henry scene at the end of FNAF 6. The fic I got to use the tag ‘is it still fluff if everyone dies’ on. TW: Hinted Unsympathetic Patton because of who he replaces

And They Were Roommates - a hurt/comfort fic writen for the sanders gift exchange last year. LAMP fic, nonbinary Dee, college AU, supportive boyfs all around

Prinxiety Prompt - takes place post DWIT, Virgil and Roman talking/flirting

Moxiety, Mobster Patton - again, nuff said. no death, actually pretty fluffy for the prompt. maybe a little kidnapping?

Movie Night: cute fluffy LAMP

Logan Prevents A Murder: QPP Analogical, Virgil debating murdering Roman

The Bane of Protectiveness: Ray was there when Roman....and she couldn’t stop him TW: Suicide, Self-deprecation, self-hatred

MM3: The Murder: based of a Murder Mystery from a discord server, how Talyn’s death played out TW: death, murder, vomiting, planned murder, drugging a drink, Unsympathetic Logan

How Ray Became Anxiety: Little clip from an au of mine where Ray becomes anxiety, along with keeping protectiveness. TW: character death, Virgil ducks out, Patton and Roman are jerks

Fighting the Dragon Witch isn’t Therapy: after POF, Roman will do anything to prove himself TW: Temporary Major Character Death

Random Fandom One Shots

Peter Meets Angel - short one shot about my oc meeting Peter (Marvel)

Mitsue Goes Off: Mitsue was already having a bad day, so when the LOV kidnaps her, she’s going to give them a piece of her mind (MHA)

We Have Mic - Mic gets kidnapped, Aizawa has something to say bout that (MHA)

Scar to Remember - Overhaul left a mark on Mitsue (MHA)

Demise Of A Gamer (DR) - Chp5 of SDR2 from Chiaki’s Pov

Friends Protect Each Other- Tubbo goes to visit Tommy during his exile...and finds Dream with him TW: manipulative Dream

Original Writing

Saving The Moon - a short story I wrote for a contest a few years back

Never Trust A Newbie- short story written for a writing camp

The Hug Wizard- if you know, you know

Spiritfarer Hug Wizard: o w o

Soulmates Don’t Have to Be Romantic (finished :D )

my platonic soulmates series, starring my oc Ray

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Soulmate GC

Based off my soulmate story, a gc with the members messing w/ each other. Crack fic.

Chp 1

Chp 2

Bad Things Happen Bingo

The Collector - Logan collects people. TW: U!Logan, Kidnapping, Taxidermy on a person, blunt force trauma, character death, implied use of a date rape drug, major character death

Pressure Doesn’t Always Make A Diamond: Reminding a side for their mistakes was never a good idea. Especially when they feel guilty about it like Patton did. TW: Unsympathetic Deceit, Unsympathetic Logan, constant guilt-tripping, self-hatred, self-deprecation, blaming someone for something that isn’t their fault

He’s Not Yours: Patton’s parents....aren’t the best TW: emotional abuse, yelling, numbness

Keeping Them Pure: Patton just wanted to make sure his kiddos wouldn’t get corrupted by those nasty dark sides TW: Unsympathetic Patton, Kidnapping, Forced holding, chains

The Past Can Haunt You: Remus keeps getting left by those he cares about TW: Abandonment, Self deprecation, Childhood Trauma, the split, implied unsympathetic light sides

Snakes Don’t Like the Cold: Dee is part snake...so what happens when he gets trapped in a freezer TW: Unsympathetic Roman, locked in a freezer, hypothermia

All It Takes Is One Mistake: It’s very easy for the Ego to crack TW: Roman angst ,cracks, roman needing to talk to people

A Game of Paranoia: Something seems off to Rantaro as he goes through this game

You Just Need a Push to be Good: Patton couldn’t let those dark sides keep corrupting Thomas TW: Unsympathethic Patton, using shock collars as punishment

‘I’m Fine’ And Other Lies: Introduction of Mitsue, my bnha oc. Mitsue gets hurt in a fight and doesn’t realize how bad it is until it’s too late TW: mention of blood, hospitals

They Never Saw It Coming: a small one shot with my own sides. Warning, the title is a really bad pun. TW: graphic eye injury

The Collector: What Happened Before: a sort of prequel to The Collector, Patton thinking over what happened TW: hypnotism, mind control, U!Logan

Replaceable?: takes place post POF, Logan’s reaction to what Janus did

Those Left Behind: Ray was there when Virgil left them

You’ll See: From my given to Overhaul AU: Why Mitsue works with Overhaul TW: Forced Starvation, Kidnapping, Parents not caring

Why Roman’s Sword Isn’t Allowed In the Common Room: All I’m gonna say is this is not as much as a crack fic as it sounds. TW: stabbing, coughing up blood, fighting

Scar To Remember: Mitsue wasn’t left okay after Overhaul got a hold of her

We Have Mic: Someone kidnaps Mic to get to Aizawa. TW: Kidnapping

Don’t Hurt Ray Or Else: Even while with the lights, Virgil is going to protect his sister TW: Morally Grey/Unsympathetic Patton, Outing Someone, not Accepting someone, Transphobia?, mentions of fighting someone

Even In The Face Of Death, Logan Ignores His Feelings - a day to relax goes wrong when Remus decides to mess with Logan TW: blood, stabbing

Trapped- Virgil gets kidnapped while out in the imagination. It doesn’t go well. TW: kidnapping, panic attack, flashbacks, claustrophobia, implied pranking, implied fighting

Who Knew Sleep Paralysis Could Be Deadly?- Talent Swap AU with Makoto and Kyoko TW: stabby stab, K-nife, sickness, sleep paralysis

Kokichi’s Sacrifice - Kokichi’s POV of Chp 4 TW: major character death, strangulation

A Well Needed Lesson - Byakuya has had enough of the Ultimate Lucky Student, Kyoko responds in return

Oh Look, A Yandere - Mic gets kidnapped by a yandere and has to try to escape TW: Yandere, kidnapping

Bad Things Happen Bingo Part 2: New Card, New Category

To Manipulate A Protector -Orange goes after Virgil? Or is that just a trick? TW: Kidnapping, implied fighting, manipulation, being controlled

Some Apologies Go Nowhere - after chp 4, Kokichi tries to apologize to Shuichi. Key word there is try

No One Noticed...- What if Shiro hadn’t been the only one Replaced? TW: Abandonment, heavy doubt, replaced and not noticed

Of All People Why’d it have to be Deku? - Bakugou and Midoryia switch bodies. Chaos ensues. TW:… cussing I guess?

A Broken Disc- Spoilers for the March 1st Tommyinnit Stream TW: Major Character Death, Attempted Manipulation, Flashbacks

not again...: Nagito gets kidnapped...again TW: kidnapping, locked in small place

Goodbye Green- Who ever said the Creativity twins were supposed to be separated? TW: Morally Grey Patton, having to leave someone you care about

One Step Behind: Phil’s POV of what happened that fateful day TW: Major Character Death, Stabbing, Bleeding Out, Explosions

Adrien’s Realization

Lila Bashing fic where Adrien finally realizes that ‘Hey what Lila is doing to me isn’t good’

Chp 1- TW: Unrequited flirting, unrequited crush, Lila hate(?)

Chp 2- TW:Self doubt, bad advice

Another Path

After All Might tells Izuku he can’t be hero, Izuku decides it might be better to take another path to help people. Planned mix of actual story and chat fic

TW: slight All Might bashing

Prologue

Chp 1

Chp 2

#masterpost #my writing #ace's writing

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senorarelojes · 4 years ago

Text

Fic: Precious (1/?)

Title: Precious (1/?) Pairing: Dave/Alan Rating: NC-17 Additional Tags: Mpreg, ABO verse

Summary: "What's wrong with me? Am I sick?" Dave asked.

"No, Mr Gahan," the doctor replied. "You're pregnant."

(It’s something I’m just writing for fun for @pinksyndication so please don’t take it too seriously and don’t click if male pregnancy isn’t your thing, sorry!)

Dave started throwing up in the mornings when they were on the Japanese leg of their tour. At first he thought the food might not have agreed with him, but then again he'd eaten copious amounts of Asian food several times before without any issue. Besides, weren't the Japanese supposed to be famous for food hygiene and cleanliness and all that?

"Just go to the doctor," Martin told him during soundcheck, watching a queasy Dave cling onto the mic stand.

"Maybe tomorrow," Dave said. His stomach had settled for now, but he still felt like shit. "Al's going to get me some meds later."

"Yeah, good luck with that." Fletch had come down from his post, eyeing Dave skeptically. "The labels are all going to be in bloody Japanese."

"I'll manage," Alan called out from behind the keyboards, where he and Daryl were trying to work out the settings.

Alan was true to his word. He'd gone to one of the many pharmacies surrounding their hotel and come back armed with several boxes of medication that Dave had no clue what they were for. At least the hotel staff tried to be helpful, explaining to Dave and Alan - in halting English and lots of animated gestures - which meds were for what purpose. Eventually they sussed out a green box that was for anti-nausea, and a pink one that was for food poisoning.

Dave retreated to his room and took the meds, groaning in bed with the blanket over his head. Alan stayed with him, ordering room service for their dinner instead of heading out with the rest. Dave was touched, but the fried greasy smell of Alan's chips was making him want to vomit.

"All right?" Alan asked distractedly, his eye on some ridiculous Japanese game show. They had at least an hour before the show tonight.

“Fine,” Dave groaned, before he stumbled out of bed and to the loo, throwing up all over again.

***

They managed to book an appointment with an English-speaking doctor in Kyoto on their next day off. Someone from the record label was supposed to bring them to the Inari Shrine and the Bamboo Forest, but the others were discussing whether to sit out the daytrip as a show of solidarity with Dave. In the end he’d insisted that they proceed without him, which was how he found himself at Kyoto University Hospital with a concerned Daryl as his chaperone. At least Alan had promised to bring him back some kitschy souvenirs and lots of video footage.

Dr Takeda was young, polite and friendly, and he asked Dave the standard questions for food poisoning or gastritis before examining him. Then he’d frowned as he prodded at Dave’s tender stomach, pressing the cold, metal disc of his stethoscope to his belly and listening intently.

Whatever Dr Takeda heard made his eyes widen in alarm. “I will be right back,” he told a confused Dave and Daryl before leaving the room.

He came back with a team of doctors, who were all peering curiously at a worried Dave. Dr Takeda was explaining something to them in urgent, rapid-fire Japanese. A senior female doctor asked Dave something, which Dr Takeda helped to translate: “How long have you been feeling sick?”

“A few weeks,” Dave said.

There were more discussions, before Dr Takeda finally told Dave that he would need to go for a blood and urine test. Dave nodded his assent, watching with growing dread as a nurse came in to extract blood from him. Then he had to go pee in a cup, handing it off to another efficient nurse.

“What the fuck’s going on?” Daryl was bewildered, eyeing the team of doctors with suspicion.

Dave just hoped it wasn’t something serious, like cancer. “I dunno, mate.”

***

It was a good few hours later when Dave finally got to sit down with Dr Takeda again, who was accompanied by the senior female doctor who had questioned Dave earlier. She gave him a quick, motherly smile, but it did not erase the curiosity in her eyes. Dave wished he wasn’t alone; Daryl had gone to look for a phone to inform everyone else that they’d been delayed at the hospital.

Dr Takeda was frowning down at the reports in front of him, shaking his head in disbelief. Dave tried to sneak a glance, but it was useless. They were all in Japanese.

"What's wrong with me? Am I sick?" Dave asked.

"No, Mr Gahan," the doctor replied. "You're pregnant."

#precious #dalan #mpreg #lactation

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lovemesomesurveys · 5 years ago

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How’s your day going? I’ve only been up for an hour and a half, but it’s been alright so far.

What shape is your face? Like a face.

What sort of computer are you on right now? MacBook Air.

What’s your favorite restaurant? I don’t really have a favorite restaurant.

What does your umbrella look like? I don’t have one.

Do you share a room with anyone? Nope.

Are you superstitious? Eh, I do the whole knock on wood thing mostly out of habit at this point.

Do you believe in astrology? No.

Take the vowels out of your name. What does it spell? Stphn.

Do you eat breakfast every day? Most days.

You can go back in time and slap one historical figure in the face. Who? Nah.

Do you have socks on? Describe them. Yeah. I always have socks on.

Pick up your cell phone for a second. Who’s your first text from? My dad was the last one to text me.

Fourth missed call? Scammer. I’ve received TEN scam calls in the past couple days.

Are you one of those people who has like a hundred apps on their phone? Nah, I don’t think I have a large amount of apps.

Have you ever been to the ballet? No.

Do you have good reflexes? They’re pretty good. Do you have many internet friends? No.

Do you think those friendships are on level with your real life ones? The online friendships I had in the past most definitely were. I felt even closer to some of my online friends.

Do you keep a journal? This is it.

Describe for me your ideal sandwich. Bologna, thin sharp cheddar cheese, mayo, mustard, and spinach with olive oil on the side mixed with basil and oregano for dipping.

What are some names that you like? I don’t feel like listing them.

Is there something you’re putting off doing in favor of this survey? No.

Are your friends generally like you or different from you? We had similarities and things in common of course, but we were also quite different.

Link me to a picture you think is cute. Nah.

Do you like blowing bubbles? No. I get bored pretty quickly with that.

What’s the band that you love even though you know they’re awful? I don’t think any of the bands I like are awful.

Ever had a pillow fight? Yeah. What do you usually pick in truth or dare? I just avoid the game altogether, ha.

Are you better at posing good questions or coming up with outrageous dares?

What is something that makes you very squeamish? Blood, vomit, really gory stuff. I can handle some gore, but this one scene from Midsommar was the worst I’ve ever seen and I haven’t been able to get that image out of my head. It was really gruesome.

Do you try those as-seen-on-TV things? Nah.

Has there been a celebrity death that really affected you? There were some that really had me trippin out. Like wow, I can’t believe they’re gone.

Do you get the dressing on the salad or on the side? On the salad.

Do you make lists, or are you more of an unplanned person? I like to make lists.

If you’re out of high school, have you stayed in touch with your high school friends? If you’re still in school, do you think you will? I have some people I went to high school with on Facebook, but we don’t talk. I keep up with them by seeing what they post on Facebook.

Is there something you like to eat that most people think is gross? I like scrambled eggs with ranch.

Do you have a lot of photographs of your friends? No.

Do you dye your hair regularly? I was. It’s been over a year now since the last time and it looks awful.

Do you think, if it came down to it, that you’d be able to kill someone? You just casually throw a question like this in the mix, sheesh.

Are you good at rating things? No.

What’s a movie that you want to see? The next movie coming out that I’m excited about is The Rise of Skywalker.

What was the name of your third grade teacher? Mrs. Wattell.

Are you a competitive person? Only in a fun way when playing board games or like Mario Kart.

Do you get into a lot of arguments? Not arguments, but bickering.

Do you like to go shopping? Yeah. I enjoy online shopping the best.

Can you knit? No.

What’s something that you really like about yourself? Uhh... I like my sense of humor. Can you pass for older than you are? I get told I look younger than I am.

Have you ever been in a situation where that was necessary? No.

Do you talk a lot? Sometimes. I have my moments where I’m really talkative.

Are you a Facebook creeper? I’ve done it before.

What is a smell that you hate? Shit lol, old food, garbage, seafood, sharpies, shoe cleaner, nail polish remover, too much perfume/cologne, too much room spray...

If you don’t set your alarm clock or anything, when will you wake up? I get up around 10 or 11. Do you even use an alarm clock, or do you just use your phone? I use the alarm clock on my phone.

Do you have a ringback tone? They don’t have those anymore.

Do you watch Maury or Steve Wilkos or anything like that? I watched those when I was younger.

What did you get your best friend for their last birthday? I pitched in with my brother to get our mom a new pair of Beats earphones.

What did they get you for yours? Adidas clothes/shoes/fanny pack/mini backpack.

Are you capable of finishing a game of Monopoly? Yeah. I used to play with my older brother and cousins and if we wanted to stop during a game we’d keep track of everyone’s money and properties so we’d be able to pick up again later.

What is a word or phrase that you overuse? “I don’t know” lol.

What’s your favorite painting? The Scream by Edvard Munch.

Have you ever written to your congressman? Once for a class assignment in high school.

Did you get sent those free AOL discs a lot? Yeah.

Are you allergic to anything? Tangerines and seasonal allergies.

What are you going to do now that you’re finished with this survey? Eat something. I have a doctor appointment soon, blah.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

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rawbutprecious · 3 years ago

Text

Long Awaited Health Update

This is an update to this post I will be putting it under the cut because it’s long, full of gaslighting and lies - it did not go well. I am frustrated, heartbroken, and still looking for help.

Okay, I went there on the 20th of May. However, their system got hacked and shutdown. I got sent home. Then, the office called on the 14th of June (a month later). It was listed as a hidden number (or whatever the term is) so I almost didn't pick up. I did. They ask if I could come up the next day to see the neurosurgeon. Of course I say yes. All good from there. I look up the doctor I'm seeing and notice he's an expert in pituitary, which I am thinking - awesome... maybe he has some ideas about my prolactin too. I see he's on the board and head of the neurosurgeon's congress and he's published a lot. That morning they text me asking me to bring my mri discs - no problem there - because due to the hacking that happened last month... that happened right as I got there... they can't really read digital files. Still all good. Didn't alarm me and I had the discs. I pack them. I head up with dad and we drive for almost 2 hours. I fill out a pain scale and wait.

I'm brought back and here's where it... plummets into gaslighting and lying. I get into the room. I tell the nurse I've gained a lot of weight and it's concerning me. She's just.... blinks and says nothing. The doctor comes in after a few minutes. He introduces himself and he basically sized me up and decided he couldn't help me just because I walked okay and I had decent hand squeezing abilities and had decent space around my spinal chord (from the laying down MRI view, which doesn't paint the whole picture - it can look just fine laying down). The doctor let me say maybe 15 sentences total. He kept saying 'let's talk about your symptoms' and then every time I tried to talk about symptoms, he talked over me and said 'let's talk about your symptoms'. He would not listen about my constant headache/migraine, vomiting, and pain (keep in mind, I have not been without pain since February), memory issues, numbness in hands, and difficulties speaking at times. I have even been to the point where my head felt swollen and I was struggling to form any words. I wasn't allowed to talk about the other symptoms I'm dealing with - like high eye pressure without glaucoma, eye pain, dizziness, ringing in the ears, dropping things, tripping (I don't fall), chest pressure that releases after a cough. And of course I asked him if prolactin can be influenced by chiari. He said he didn't know anything about prolactin, to go back to my endocrinologist (who wants to put me on medication that can cause psychosis, dizziness, nausea, and gambling issues and several in my family took it for other things and had horrendous reactions). He said he had never heard of chiari affecting prolactin - I have a medical study that shows at least 2 cases of high prolactin being reversed from decompression surgery. Keep in mind prolactin is made in the pituitary and his biography on the website lists pituitary as his specialty. I also asked him if he knew about chiari and Ehlers-Danlos syndromes. He said to go to a rheumatologist and he said that EDS doesn't go with chiari, which is a flat out lie because it is a very, very, very common co-disorder with chiari. A five second google will tell you that. The doctor did not give me advice for pain medicines (even though I told him I haven't been out of pain and that tylenol and ibuprophen is not working at all). Did not suggest physical therapy or an upright mri, which the majority of neurosurgeons do way before discussing surgery He said go back to my GP and try to find a different neurologist because he didn't think any of it was chiairi. Didn't think I needed surgery because lots of people have chiari and he judges surgery on diagnosis and symptoms. the upright mri shows a different flow of spinal fluid. Laying down the spinal fluid can be normal but then sitting/standing up there is a blockage or a narrowing. I also couldn't talk about how exhausted I was from the pain and how I have no quality of life right now. Usually they also order a sleep study and heart monitor to make sure everything is going okay. I was somehow left with less than when I returned except that he did suggest to go to a different neurologist. Then out of interest I did some more research on the center and it seems they are no longer actively treating Chiari. They are also no longer linked with the top pediatric hospital where they were doing Chiari surgeries. Their systems are still down so people cannot call into the clinic either. Keep in mind treatment plan for Chiari are not just on how the MRI looks because there can be people with a 3 mm herniation and have lots of symptoms that are fixed with treatment. There are some people with 19 mm permeation that have no symptoms. It is the symptoms and quality of life that dictate how you treat this disorder. I have lots of symptoms and a limited quality of life. He would not listen to my symptoms. Part of me thinks that he made a split second judgment on my reaction to my symptoms because of autism.

#tw: medical gaslighting #tw: medical #tw: chronic illness #tw: chronic pain

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bloggerblagger · 6 years ago

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87) Blank space. (And the profound questions deriving therefrom.)

I was there. ______________________________________________________________________

I am looking for a film.

I have hunted high and low and I can’t find it.

I don’t mean a roll of film - who has those these days? Unless you’re living in the dark ages. Or in Hackney or Stokie or Lewisham and have a beard, tatts, nose ring, possibly a lip disc - and that’s just the girls, tee hee. (Sorry, I meant cis gender women.) (And trans women too of course.) (Maybe I shouldn’t have started this.)

Anyway, no, I do not mean that kind of film, I mean a film as in a movie, a flick, a picture, a cinematic experience. I have lost one - no. 45 to be precise - and being a bit anal about these things, I am quite disturbed.

To explain: a few weeks ago we had the London Film Festival. As a one time titan of the airwaves, and now the the author of this estimable blog, I am, in exchange for an ever increasing fee - forty five quid this year - able to blag a press pass.

And very grateful I am. What better way to fill a retiree’s days as the autumn chill begins to bite.

The trouble with joy

Ah! If only simple pleasure were enough for me. I am, as Woody Allenonce described himself, ‘anhedonic’. As I understand it, that means incapable of having a good time for the sake of it.

Something - somewhere inside my amygdala or frontal lobe or wherever such impulses lurk - insists that I must have an aim, a goal of some kind. It’s as though standing before the Eiger, it would not be enough for me to admire its magisterial beauty. I would feel an irresistible compulsion to grab some crampons and leg it up the North face. (Okay, possibly a slight overclaim there but you get the idea.)

And thus it is that, each year, my principal purpose at the festival really has nothing to do with appreciating the glories of world cinema. As with the mountain that must be climbed because it is there, I hear an irresistible call to a completely pointless course of action.

My personal Eiger (it really should be Everest but I’m stuck with the Eiger now) is to pay an average price of less than £1 per screening that I enter.

Rules of the game

And lest you think that’s dead easy - and that all I have to do is walk in, get the person with the BFI badge and the little hand held recording doobery to record my press pass number, and then walk straight out again - you are most seriously mistaken.

Rule 27 subsection b, clearly states that I have to see enough to be able to write some kind of review for each and every film.(See below.) (And further below.) (And much further below.) Furthermore, although I am permitted to walk out if I think the film is really shite, I have to stay for at least half an hour.

It is a feat that I have, for one reason and another - typically, violent vomiting brought about by a surfeit of Gallic pretentiousness or a crippling attack of wobblycamitis - never previously managed to accomplish. And inflation makes it an ever more daunting prospect. It’s like the Eiger growing another couple of thousand feet every year. At the 2018 price, it would mean I had to see at least forty six films.

Reaching for the stars

The one thing that gave me a tiny shred of hope was that this year I would be in London with a more or less empty diary for the entire period of press previews, beginning Sept 24th, and for the actual festival, which ended October 21st. Forty six films in twenty nine days. Obviously tough, but at one and three fifths a day, it did seem just about doable.

In fact, a bit like Mo Farah, who is happy to ease himself into the race and hang about at the back of the field for the first lap, I saw only one film a day for the first week and gradually stepped it up so that by the beginning of the final week I still had twenty three films to see. Yes, as the bell sounded for the last lap, I still had an immense amount of ground to make up.

But I was honed, oiled (a steady diet of oatmilk lattés) and up for the challenge. Saw four films a day Mon to Fri, except Wed when I saw five - my first ever 5 a day! Saw two on the Sat - but, as much as it stuck in my craw, paid - PAID! - for a ticket for one of them (will explain later) so only one counted. And then three more on the final Sunday. Meaning I had seen forty eight films overall with forty seven eligible - forty seven for the price of my forty five pounds press pass. Average cost: 95.744 pence.

NINETY FIVE POINT SEVEN FOUR FOUR PENCE!!!! Cue tumultuous applause, wild cheering, caps being hurled into the air, my modest, slightly sheepish acceptance of bouquets thrown at my feet, headlines in the dailies, in depth analyses in the Sundays, a billion tweets, Facebook breaking down through worldwide overload, invitations to appear on Breakfast TV, The One Show - rejected - Graham Norton - maybe - James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke - okay - and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon - accepted if whole show is devoted to me.

Let the naysayers nay

Of course, I knew there would be doubters. Small minded types consumed with envy - very possibly like yourself - and conspiracy theorists who would insist that, like the landing on the moon, seeing forty eight films (forty seven eligible) in twenty nine days was simply beyond the reach of humankind and that the whole enterprise was some kind of epic confidence trick.

So I knew I would need proof. And so I kept notes. Contemporaneously. Each film I saw, I noted down on the yellow notebook thingy on my i-phone. From one to forty eight (forty seven eligible) they went in and were consecutively numbered. And then, at the end, it was my intention to review them. (Too busy resting in my bivouac - aka the cafe in the PIcturehouse Central - to write them as I saw them.)

That was the plan and the plan was put into effect. All went swimmingly, if several tads slowly - at the time of bloglication it’s already the thick end of a month since the Festival finished - until I reached no 45.

And then - disaster.

YIkes!

44 was clear enough: ‘Ollie and Stan.’ And 46 was there: ‘Girl’’. But beside the number 45, there was nothing. Just blank space. (And though Blank Space could easily have been a film, perhaps based on the song Blank Space by Taylor Swift - ‘I’ve got a blank space baby, And I’ll write your name’ - and there was actually a film called Blank Spaces made in 2010, the blank space in question was just in fact, no more than that, a blank space.)

The reader - if there still is one - will be easily able to imagine how distraught I was. I was - and I remain - convinced that I had seen forty eight movies (forty seven eligible) but I could only identify forty seven ( and therefore only forty six eligible.)

How could this have happened, I wept and beseeched the God in whom I do not believe? As expected, no answer, but retracing my fingers I concluded that in writing the reviews beside the numbers, I had unwittingly deleted the name of the film that had been beside the number 45.

An absence of proof

I grabbed my dog-eared copy of the Festival Programme and cross-checked all the gazillions of titles with those on my list, to see if there was one that I recognised that might have been no.45. But when you are as anal/OCD/idiotic as I am, you have to be punctiliously - obsessively - honest and I have to confess that I couldn’t find anything. I delved into the settings of my i-phone’s yellow notepad thingy several times to see, if I had by any chance, inadvertently made a copy of the original entries before I began the review, but nada.

Eventually I had to accept that, like Shergar, the name of the film that should have been beside no.45, would never be found. My only consolation was that this fascinating tale would be the basis for a fantastic movie, which I shall, one day, star in, write, direct, and produce: ‘And the winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor/Writer/Director/Motion Picture goes to: Richard Phillips, Richard Phillips, Richard Phillips, Blank Space!’)

Other than that, I am left with nothing but a terrible quandary. Do I insist, despite the missing movie, that I saw forty eight films (forty seven eligible) and that the price of 95.744 per film stands? Or do I say, since I cannot name film no.45, that, for the official record, I shall accept, albeit grudgingly and bitterly, that only forty seven films (forty six films eligible) can be counted, which increases the average price to 97.827pence per film. Yes, still inside £1 but unarguably by a substantially narrower squeak.

But that is not proof of absence.

As you will imagine, I have, before sending this blog post off into the e-ther, fought an epic battle with my conscience. I have tossed and turned in the night, spent days in a monastic retreat - well, sitting on the loo, as good as - before deciding that, one missing title notwithstanding, I did indeed see forty eight films (forty seven eligible) and will claim, until the moment I have taken my last breath that the average price per film was 95.744p. Indeed, given the importance this has assumed in my life, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that these will be my actual last words - though hopefully not right now.

However, my rigid insistence on complete honesty demands that I confess that there is another reason for choosing the 95.744 option.

It is this: There is another rule - 39, clause iv - that has to be obeyed. And to explain that properly, I need to go out of order and begin my reviews with no.22

Ignorance is not always bliss.

Rule 39, clause iv, states that I must see every film ‘completely cold’ - by which I mean, knowing as little as conceivably possible about what I am about to see. I make a point/fetish of never reading the Festival programme blurb before I go in. When going to the cinema in the ordinary way, that is to say paying a proper price, I do everything I can to avoid seeing a trailer, usually by timing my entrance so I miss them, but if not, I cover my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears, and I would go ‘la la la la la’ except I would be bombarded by popcorn and soggy nachos.

And I never, ever so much as glance at a review until after I've seen the film, and not just because I think all reviewers - except me - are tossers. I want to make a judgement of my own, uninfluenced by the half baked opinions of others. I want to witness the story unfold exactly as the director intended that it should. Of course my determination to be so pure has its drawbacks occasionally, and never more so than in this case.

Thus:

22 Little Drummer Girl

I went in with high hopes as the director Park Chan Wook, who made the astonishing Korean and Korean-ised version of Sarah Waters’ fantastic (I thought) novel Fingersmith. (His film was called The Handmaiden, not to be confused with The Handmaid's Tale.)

TLDG started intriguingly and then, after about an hour, the end credits rolled, seemingly half way through the film. I sat there thinking, ‘how very odd’, but, given my admiration for this director’s previous film, I decided this must be some uber cool directorial device and carried on watching regardless. Then an hour later the same credits rolled again, this time, as it turned out, at the conclusion of the performance. Even odder, for there seemed to have been no clue - at least none that I’d picked up - as to why the credits had been run the first time.

So whatever uber cool trick the director was trying to bring off, it was clearly way too cool for me. Moreover the story was left completely unresolved. It seemed as though there was a lot more to be said and the audience had been left high and dry. The whole thing was completely baffling. Until, that is, I finally referred to the programme blurb and discovered this wasn’t a film at all but the first two episodes of a new BBC series. (Now showing.)

Why should this be shown at a Film Festival, especially when the TV series is to be broadcast only two weeks later? Answers on a postcard please.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.0* (Not a film.)

So, you can see the problem. This wasn’t strictly a film - as in a movie that you might see in a regular cinema - at all. So should it count? If the Rules Committee (me, myself and I) took a really strict view, they might not allow The Little Drummer Girl through even though I had thought it would be a proper film when I went in.

You can see where I am going with this. If I had not refused to back down on the missing no.45, I could have been in serious trouble. Because If I hadn’t and the Committee put their black caps on in regard to no.22, I would be down to forty six films viewed and only forty five eligible, meaning the average price of entry would be £1 exactly.

Still a formidable achievement but, whichever way you look at it, £1 cannot be simultaneously less than £1. I would my miss target for yet another year.

Agonisingly close but no cigar. And you can’t really plant the flag unless you’ve reached the summit.

Let the record show

As I have said, I am not a believer but sometimes one simply has to invoke the name of the so-called creator because it is the only word that will do. So thank God that after long, and sometimes hotly contested deliberations, the committee voted by a majority of two to one (myself and I for the motion, me dissenting) to take a lenient view and admit no 22. What’s more they didn’t even raise the subject of the missing no.45.

So, all’s well that ends well. Will 95.744p ever beaten? One never knows, but my guess this is a Bob Beamon Plus Plus Plus sort of record.

One final note before I get to the other forty six reviews. I am the reviewer who is absolutely, positively guaranteed never to give the game away. No plot spoilers, no tedious Kermodian descriptions of every tiny thing. In fact, sod all apart from the odd detail such as the title, occasionally who might be in it, its country of origin and the briefest reference to the skeleton of the story.

Reading one of my reviews you will never learn who dunnit. You won’t even know wot they dun.

The rest of the reviews:

1 Asako 1&2 (numbers are part of the title)

Japanese romance with a clever plot twist. Inoffensive, watchable - a slightly different slant (shamefully politically incorrect pun but impossible to resist) on familiar themes. 3*

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

2 Petra

An incoherent Spanish film about a young woman and a small daughter in search of something or other. Complex plot which asked too much of this audience. (By which I mean me.) Tiresome.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1.5*

3 The Guilty

Highly unusual and thought provoking thriller of sorts. Although nothing remotely like it, except in its ‘message’, it reminded me of the celebrated Guardian commercial - celebrated if you lived in the advertising bubble, that is - which showed one scene from different points of view, each one altering your assumptions about what was going on.

A lot of concentration required for ‘The Guilty’ - slightly more than I had. A few irritating plot flaws but worth your time.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

4 Wildlife

Thanks to British Rail’s time honoured uselessness, I was 10 minutes late but I don’t think I missed anything crucial. This was the very first film I saw but I can still just about remember it which says quite a lot for it I suppose. Carey Mulligan who I usually don’t like is very good in this 50s Americanadrama. Ed Oxenbould as the teenage son in the midst of a family crisis is impressive.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

5 Crystal Swan

The lesson to be learned here is that under no circumstances choose Belorussia for your next holiday unless unremitting bleakness turns you on. But the story of a rebellious young woman desperate to get a visa to America is intriguing and persuasive.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

6 Shadow

Another of those Chinese warrior films which involves all sorts of leaping about and balletic sword twirling. Not my cup of Lapsang Souchong but if it’s yours, go for it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

7. Arctic.

Icelandic. Very snowy. A man lost and hungry and not a happy bunny (not that any bunny would be) in the eponymous frozen somewhere. In short, All Is Lost on Ice. (A brilliant line if I say so myself. If you haven’t seen All Is Lost, you should because it’s better and also because you will then appreciate the brilliance of the line which will otherwise be wasted on you )

On the other hand if you don’t see it, Arctic will probably seem more original and interesting than it did to me.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

8 Jinn

Awful, unlikely story about a black Californian teenager who wants to shake her booty and her controlling TV weatherwoman mother who discovers Islam.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

9 Manto

Worthy but tedious biopic about a famous writer caught up in the cross border chaos of Indian/Pakistani independence. I lasted for about 3/4 of it, then decided to get a sandwich instead.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

10 After the Screaming Stops

Where else but at a press screening at the London film Festival would you find yourself watching a documentary about a Bros reunion? Interesting in that it showed what an incredible jerk Matt Goss is. And sometimes funny in the laughing-at as opposed to laughing-with sense.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

11 May the Devil Take You

Walked out. Hated it. Apart from that I can’t remember anything.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.0.5*

12 Mandy

Never got all this cult film bollocks. Never liked Russ Meyer or got George Romero or John Waters and this film which appears to be in this ‘cult’ category was , as far, as I was concerned, simply unbearable. Left after an hour. Yes, I know it’s had fantastic reviews from all and sundry but then remember, fengshui proves that a billion Chinese can be wrong.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating. - (minus) 200*

13 Ash Is Purest White

A Chinese melodrama about low level gangster life centred on the life of the moll. (I mean morr- ha ha ha.) (Is it racist to make pathetically obvious jokes, if you can call them that, about Chinese/ Japanese pronunciation issues? Probably yes, so why do I keep doing it? Discuss.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2.5*

14.Widows

The gushing reviews it seems to have received (judging by the number of stars on the posters on the underground) baffle me. It was nothing more than a highly polished turd. The original television serious was completely implausible and this film is no improvement. In the trailer that I advertently failed to miss, ‘12 Years a Slave’ director and, in another life, Turner prize winner, Steve McQueen - the new one not the dead one - appears himself to claim this is the film he always wanted to make.

Personally I think it might have been about the money.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2*

15 Thunder Road

A curious piece, written and directed and starring the same person, all about the disintegrating life of an American policeman. Tonally it was partly black comedy and partly unalloyed tragedy. A tour de force of sorts creatively, but not quite sure what to make of it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

16 Border

A love story with knobs on - but not necessarily in the usual places - this is a quite brilliant piece of filmmaking which questions the very nature of attraction. ‘Border’ has a very contemporary story but one which is drawn, apparently, from Nordic mythology. One of the two or three best films I saw in the festival. Highly recommended.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

17 Colette

I started by being irritated by Collette. Keira Knightley has had a bit too much onscreen rumps pumpy to be a convincing teenager in plaits skipping through the grass. And there was early dialogue referencing toothpaste and the top line on an optician’s charts. In 1892? Did they have those in 1892? (The answer it turns out is yes - toothpaste invented in the 1850s, Colgate producing it in jars in 1873 and in tubes in the 1890s, and opticians have been around since earlier than that - so one in the eye for me. And one in the mouth.)

But all this became quickly irrelevant anyway. Because I stopped being picky and submitted to the charm of this film, seduced by the bravura performance of Dominic West - who seemed made for his twinkly eyed, moustache twirling part and by the surprisingly nuanced Keira Knightley - never been a fan but I am now. As it turned out, after that first slightly jarring note, she was perfectly cast as the country school girl who goes on to be a revolutionary in the fin de siecle culture war in Paris.. But above all it was the astonishing, and very well told, story of Collette - nothing of which I knew - which fascinated. In short, a damn good night at the cinema.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

18 Beautiful Boy

Film about parental angst over teenage son’s descent into drugs hell. I found it interesting, if for no other reason than it made me realise the blindingly obvious fact that each viewer sees a film through the prism of their own life experience and that must affect their appreciation of it. In this case, as a father I couldn’t help but see things from the father’s point of view but if you you were in the first flush of youth you would, I think see it from the son’s.

The casting of Timothy Hutton as the expert to whom we see Steve Carell talking caught my eye because he was, about 40 years ago, the Timothy Chalomet of his day - remember ‘Ordinary People’?- and then looked a little like him.

And here’s another curious little factoid about Timothy Hutton - perhaps something to thrill the table with if Christmas lunch is flagging. He also appeared in a 1996 film called Beautiful Girls.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

19 Sometimes. Always.Never

Light, low budget British comedy with Bill Nighy; painstakingly made and clearly a labour of love. A little twee at times but very well played and with something semi-profound to say - though at a distance of a few days, having seen so many films since, I can’t remember exactly what it was.

It had a particular appeal for me because the hero had spent a life in the menswear business, as my father did, and the title refers to how one should button a three button jacket, from top button downwards - something I learned at an early age and have never forgotten.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

20. Roma

I would say that Roma was a faultless recreation of 1970s Mexico City except that I wasn’t in Mexico City in the 1970s so how could I know? It did however ring completely true to me - apart from a shower head which looked suspiciously modern - pedantic? moi? - and demonstrated the astonishing versatility of the director, Adolpho Cuaron, who also made ‘Y Mama Tu Tambien’ 'Children of God' and ‘Gravity’ - that’s some CV - films which could not be more different to this. ‘Roma’ is a sort of upstairs downstairs story and has wonderful performances from all the actors but most particularly from the main character, the young servant girl.

If I have one caveat it is that it didn’t quite ��speak to me’, apart from making me queasily guilty that I have a cleaning lady.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

21 Non Fiction

One of those literary French films purporting to be profoundly intellectual (even if, in this case, also supposed to be ironically amusing.) All about writers and publishers and their existential angst in the digital world. But then aren’t all French films like this about existential angst - whatever it means? This is the sort of thing I viscerally loathe and after about half an hour, je sort, and gave ‘Non Fiction’, the General de Gaulle - ‘Non! Non! Non!’

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

23 Life Itself

Not everybody loves this film; in fact, the reviews have generally had the whiff of a blocked drain, but I claim my right to vigorously demur - up to a point. Directed and written by Dan Fogelman (the guy who does ‘This Is Us’ on Netflix or somewhere) it begins with a story about familiar Noo Yorker angst but approaches it from a surprising angle - at least to me. ‘Life Itself’, comes in four labelled acts, something I don’t like in movies usually but the first three worked for me. The last seemed like a rather - make that very - tired cliché.

My main issue with the film was that, whereas with Roma I couldn’t quite understand what it was trying to say, here the message was triple underlined in upper case bold. Not yet quite at the stage of jibbering senescence where I need to be spoon-fed.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

24 Wild Rose

Have to declare an interest here. The film’s star, Jessie Buckley, is someone I know a little, and whose career I have watched with interest since she was about 18 when she appeared on a TV talent show and after which I interviewed her. I am a massive fan. She is an astonishingly gifted singer and a damn good actor. (Brilliant in her earlier non-singing role in last year’s ‘Beast’, which I thought was an exceptional movie, better than this to be honest, and which may yet prove to be a bit of a sleeper.)

‘Wild Rose’ is about a single mother from the badlands of a Scottish estate who has a yen to be a Nashville diva. (A bit like Lady Gaga in ‘A Star is Born’. C&W seems all the rage at the mo.) ‘Wild Rose’ has a few credulity stretching moments but the feel good peaks make you want to ignore those. It will make the Saturday night popcorn go down with a tear and a cheer. And it is a wonderful showcase for Jesse, who, If there is any justice, is destined for Hollywood mega stardom.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

25 Sunset

Lazló Némes, who made last year’s wincingly convincing Auschwitz film ‘Son of Saul’, now comes up with a wobbly cam evocation of verge-of-World War One Budapest called ‘Sunset’. By a complete but happy coincidence the person sitting next to me turned out to be an old pal, Saul Metzstein, who is a movie director himself.

I was gratified to learn that he was as mystified by this film as I was. No idea what the point of it was - went straight over my head. (Which, admittedly does not require much intellectual elevation.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2*

26 Dogman

Loved this. One of my Festival top three or four and likely, I read, to be a runner in the Oscar Foreign Film race. It’s a modern tale of the little man in a hostile world and takes place in one of those seedy parts of Italy that you find everywhere if you stray very far from the tourist trail. It is already on release - in fact, by the time I get around to posting this blog, it may already be finished, but try to catch it if you can. (Beware of violence though, if that bothers you.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

27 The Kindergarten Teacher

Never been much of a Maggie Gyllenhaal fan - always seems a bit cold and distant to me - but she is exceptional in this unusual contemporary New York drama about a thoroughly decent middle aged woman who, for reasons which may or may not be valid, finds herself out of step with those about her. Intriguing and thought provoking and better the more I think about it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

28 They Shall Not Grow Old

Everyone is raving about Peter Jackson’s colour and 3-D reincarnation of genuine old World War One footage but it left me pretty cold.

It may be - no doubt is - an astonishing technical feat but after so many books and plays and films and so much TV and radio devoted to the subject I am afraid to say that I have a touch of World War One fatigue and this didn’t relieve my symptoms.

Last year’s wonderful remake of RC Sherriff’s ‘Journey’s End’ packed far more emotional punch, for me at least. Yes, the colour pictures of corpses and lice and rats and trenchfoot were ghastly but I wasn’t shocked and I wasn’t surprised. Who doesn’t know that World War I was unspeakably awful? Or rather, who amongst those who might go to see a film like this, doesn’t know? (‘Venom’ fans, I would have thought, are unlikely customers.)

My biggest complaint, though, is about the soundtrack: I found the unrelenting stream of voices irritating and soon switched off and stopped listening to what they had to say. Easily the most powerful piece of sound in the film was, I thought, the accompaniment to the end title, the marching troops singing ‘Mademoiselle from Armentiers’. (Sung of course, as Ah-men-tears’.) Nothing seemed to me to sum up the pathos and suicidal naivety of the cannon fodder as much as this.

Perhaps more music of the same intensity and fewer quotes might have made them more memorable.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2.5*

29 Rosie

An Irish version of a Ken Loachy sort of film about decent people caught in the poverty trap. Persuasive and faultlessly done. But I am not sure what it told me that I would prefer not to know but unfortunately do.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

30 El Angel

A highly original and sometimes very funny, blood soaked, true story about a teenage boy with decent, law abiding parents and a head of blonde curls which is set in Argentina (where, typically, people are swarthy with black hair) in the 70s, and who determinedly but very merrily sets about pursuing his ambition to become a ruthless murdering gangster. If there seem to be a few contradictions there, that is the joy of this film.

Remember to search for it on Amazon or Netflix in a few months if it doesn’t get a release.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

31 Florianopolis Dream

Was really struggling to remember anything at all about this film and, until I checked, I thought it was more of the seedy Italian seaside and the story of two women battling it out to claim maternal rights over a small child. But now I realise that was another film entirely, which was....

32, Daughter of Mine.

Okay but in the unlikely event of it ever getting a release, I wouldn’t worry about FOMO if you can’t manage to see it.

And, now that I do remember it, likewise Florianopolis Dream, a Brazilian effort about a family’s seaside holiday in a place where it seemed to be perpetually cloudy. (Just to be clear, the cloudiness was nothing to do with the plot, which was largely non-existent, but the obviously very low budget. I am sure the director would have preferred the sun but couldn’t afford to wait.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.

Florianopolis Dream 1.5*,

Daughter of Mine 2.5*

33 Capharnaum

A close second, that well might have been first had I not seen the winner afterwards in the race to be my top pick of the festival. Timing is everything.. This is the heartbreaking yet ultimately uplifting story of a boy of about twelve brought up in abject poverty in the slums of what I presume was Beirut.

The performance of the boy is magical and though a two hour journey through the world of the Lebanese dispossessed (or rather, the would’ve been dispossessed if they had ever possessed anything in the first place) may not sound like a fun Saturday night at the pictures, do not be put off. Whilst not so much pricking your conscience as repeatedly firing a Kalashnikov at it, it somehow manages to be a feel-good movie at the same time.

My only quibble was that the editing around the clever device upon which the plot is built, slightly confused me at the end. Oh, and also, what’s with the title? Could they have found anything more obscure? Or maybe there was a clue in the film but, if so, I didn’t pick it up.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4.5*

34 Birds of Passage

Think of this as a pre-prequel to Narcos. Drugs and grisly murders mixed in with a bit of ancient dream interpretation in Colombia in the sixties, when it was the Native Americans (or one of the 87 tribes of Pueblos lndigenas as they call them in Colombia - isn’t Google marvellous?) and not the Sicarios who were cashing in on the medical benefits of the local cash crop.

Judging by the gore in ‘Birds of Passage’, they could have taught Pablo Escobar a thing or two about effective persuasion - blowpipes were out and sub machine guns deffo in. Clear and solid storyline, good pace, convincing acting, and lots of ketchup - what’s not to like? Another probable Oscar Foreign Film contender.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

35 Carmen and Lola

Good late Sunday night on BBC4 type film in which two young gypsy women in modern day Spain confront the fixed ideas of their incurably misogynistic families. One fascinating side effect of seeing this film was noticing in the sub-titles that the Roma in Spain (who are not shown as travellers but living in permanent homes) refer to the wider Spanish community as white people.

To me, the man and woman in the Spanish Street and the Roma all looked pretty much the same - dark haired and sallow skinned, and hard to differentiate from each other. I mentioned this in the Q&A afterwards and Spanish members of the audience - and remember, film festival goers are usually predictably right-on - seemed a bit put out. Perhaps I was being tactless and/or naive. Prejudice runs deeper than you might think.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

36 The Quake

I correctly interpreted the title as heralding a thriller about an earthquake and looked forward to some light relief from the intense social commentaries that are the bread and butter of the festival. I have rarely seen a bad Norwegian film but I did this time. Ludicrous plot, wildly overdone CGI including a slowly toppling, and clearly named Radisson hotel - very odd product placement. Avoid.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 1*

37 Girls of The Sun

A no punches pulled war film from a French woman director about Yazidi girls fighting in the Kurdish army in Iraq. Couldn’t help but be struck by the casting of far and away the prettiest girl as the group leader and main character. A curious - commercial? - decision in such a feminist piece.

A decent enough effort otherwise but I feel that Henry Naylor’s plays which have done so well at Edinburgh and in New York in recent years (Borders, Angel etc, a couple of which are on at the Arcola, Dec 4-22) and which deal with similar themes do so much more effectively. A rare case - for me- of the cinema being inferior to the theatre.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3*

38 The White Crow

Quite nteresting without being competely fascinating, watchable without being riveting, this is a tale of the early days of Nureyev directed by Ralph Fiennes, who also appears, thankfully not as Rudy, but as his teacher, giving a performance which I found somewhat distracting as he strongly reminded me of Paul Whitehouse. Nureyev Is portrayed as an unsympathetic character, driven and selfish, which could well have been true, so ‘The White Crow’ ticked the ‘seems authentic’ box, although his chilliness doesn’t help you love the film.

I would semi-enthusiastically recommend it, but I doubt it will be shown very widely since I can’t see it doing brilliantly at the box office - not sure that the world of ballet is a place the Saturday night popcorn crowd want to visit. And who under 50 will know much - or indeed anything - about Rudolph Nureyev and his place in the sixties zeitgeist? But then who cares? It wasn’t my money.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

39 Burning

There seemed to to be a bit of a buzz about this film amongst the so called press (aka the vast number of liggers who, like me, and with no less right, had managed to blag a press pass) but I have no idea why. It’s a strange story about the homecoming of a rather disorientated young Japanese chap with a father in gaol and another contrastingly self assured young fellow who is doing jolly nicely thankyou. Plus, for some reason, there are burning glasshouses. Utterly mystifying - to me at least - and so slow it made the average glacier seem like Usain Bolt.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2*

40 Yommedine

A road movie about an Egyptian leper and a runaway orphan. (One of the many surprisingly good things about this film is that there it unlikely to be a Hollywood remake.)

An astonishing achievement to have made such a simultaneously upbeat and yet deeply moving film about people one would normally think of as being at the very bottom of the heap if, that is, one gave them any thought to them at all. Brilliant performances that take us beneath the skin that so many are terrified to touch.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

41.Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Stands a pretty good chance of coming to a cinema near you and I don’t you think will begrudge the price of a ticket. Melissa McCarthy gives a masterful - if that’s the right word to use - performance in the true story of surly, lonely, habitually rude 51-year-old biographer and lesbian Lee Israel and her extraordinary and ingenious attempts to make money in 90s New York.

Richard E. Grant plays her camp hoppo with all the Richard E. Grantness that you’d expect and Dolly Wells does a nice little turn as a guileless bookshop owner. (To be frank I might not have mentioned her, but coincidentally her mother was my Airbnb guest on the day I went to see this film, so I thought it was only fair to give her a shout out, and I did think she was pretty good.) Amusing, touching and very watchable.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

42 The Hate U Give

Based on a ‘young adult novel, this is the story of a young black girl living in a rundown, violent, gang ridden district because her father, whilst allowing her to be sent to a private white school doesn’t want to make the move into a middle-class world. (Sounds fairly unlikely but on this occasion, I wasn’t in one of my usual hole picking moods so I went with it.)

A series of regrettable incidents force her to come to terms with the conflicting aspects of her identity. Not quite sure if this film was actually intended for my demographic group, but, despite it’s improbable plot turns, I thought it had something useful to say. And hear.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

42 The Sisters Brothers

Saw this on the day that I actually managed to attend five screenings. A notable achievement but knackering and while I was supposed to be watching this - I think it was my fourth of the day - I have to admit I nodded off more than once. I have a strong feeling it was probably rather good - featured Joaquin Pheonix, Jake Gylenhal, John C.Reilly, so a promising cast - but I’m not really sure. Anyway, it’s cowboy film with a slightly Coen Brothers tone of voice, but isn’t one of theirs.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

43 A Private War

Like Maggie Gyllenhaal - see The Kindergarten Teacher, above - Rosamond Pike has never been a favourite of mine. and for similar reasons. I’ve always found her ice queen manner slightly off putting. Here she is playing legendary war journalist Marie Colvin but I never believed her. Lots of actoring with cigarettes and an eyepatch and her unruly wig flapping about but it just seemed like dressing up to me. I kept wanting to scream at the screen, ‘Put a bloody helmet on!’.

For all that, I can’t deny that ‘A Private War’ held my attention and had the odd moment.The sort of thing that might not seem a complete waste of time when it makes its inevitable appearance on BBC2 late on some future Sunday night. Otherwise not really recommended.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

44 Stan and Ollie

As a child in the er ah ahem um er nineteen whatevers I use to love Laurel and Hardy and here John C. Reilly and the make up artists do a great job of recreating Oliver Hardy on screen and Steve Coogan is more than passable if less impressive as Stan laurel.

A fascinating story of their later years but for me, let down by the stagey, artificial representation of fifties England. Also very odd casting and playing of legendary impresario Bernard Delfont. Was Lew Grade’s brother really like that? No idea but not how I imagined the man who brought us Sunday Night At the London Palladium. Still, all in all, a pretty decent night out at the flicks.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

45. (As previously discussed.)

46 GIRL

On the final Saturday I went with some friends to see the announcement of the result and the screening of the film which had won the best first feature award and I had to pay so I could sit with my pals. A little bit of a gamble as there was a chance I had already seen the winning movie,.

The winner turned out to be Girl, a story about a Belgian boy of 15 who wanted to be a ballerina. (Note: Not another Billy Elliott - he wanted to be a real ballerina.) When the announcement of the award was made, the good news was that it was a film I hadn’t already seen but the bad, I glumly thought, was that I had consciously decided not to see it earlier in the week because, to be honest, I have grown a little weary of the entire LGBTQ I XYZ trans-gender, cis gender, gender fluidity, gender whatever, what? WTF!, what-do-THEY-do? thing.

Only it didn’t turn out to be bad news at all. Girl is an absolutely extraordinary film, deeply touching with an astonishing performance by the young boy playing the young boy who wanted to be a girl. Not only was it riveting viewing but it made me completely rethink my attitude to the whole transgender thing. Whereas previously my attitude might have been summed up as ‘all these boys wanting to be boys and girls wanting to be boys - perlease!’ I felt afterwards that I had at least a small but sympathetic understanding of the predicament that Victor/Lara and his family faced. And by extension, others like them. A really good film can do that - open your eyes and mind to a different world.

So, from being a movie that I hadn’t wanted to to see, Girl became my personal pick of the festival and recipient of the Palme d’bloggerblagger

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 5*

46 Blaze

Went to see this because I noticed that Ethan Hawke was the director and I am a bit of a fan of his work both as an actor and as a writer - he once wrote a very good novel, the name of which now escapes me. Unfortunately this film, a story, supposedly true, of a singer and songwriter in the sixties - I think - failed to stop me from making short but frequent visits to the land of nod.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

47 The Fight

The very last film I saw, A low budget British film about a fortyish woman in a racially mixed marriage with a bullied child and a dark secret and a bad relationship with her own mother and who, for some reason that I never quite got to grips with, takes up boxing. I might have appreciated this film more had my hearing been better. I discovered in post movie conversation (with one of the other members of the press/ liggers ) that I had mistaken the spoken number 30 for 13 and that had a significant bearing on my misunderstanding of the story, and consequent confusion and mild dissatisfaction.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

PS Anyone with so much time on their hands that they have waded through this nonsense until the end will have noticed, as I have only just done, that there were, in fact, two no 42s. Which I take to mean that, joy of joys, we have found the missing no 45. (Something obviously went awry with the numbering system in my i-phone’s yellow notebook thingie. Or possibly, though obviously improbably, it was my fault.)

Delighted to have been vindicated in my claim that I did indeed see 48 films (47 eligible.) Or, if there were an appeal against the present ‘Little Drummer Girl’ decision (unlikely but you never know) and it were to be upheld by the Rules Committee (even unlikelier) I would have seen 47 films (46 eligible.) And in even that remote eventuality I would still have officially reached the summit of my personal Eiger (Everest).

But it also means 80% of the first 1500 words of this post are completely redundant.

I could start again, I suppose. And I probably should. And yet….really?

1 note · View note

feverhalo · 7 years ago

Text

So. Heres this old fic from uhhhhhhhhhhhhh I really don’t remember how long ago. Originally I had it split into 3 parts on the posts that inspired it- and it was my first attempt at writing anything along the lines of stuffing, but it kind of ended up more like he was already coming down with something. It was on my first attempt at a fic blog- way back when and it got deleted because I didnt know how sideblogs worked back then and goofed. Thought I lost everything, then I found an old disc with a whole whack of it on there.

At the moment I can only find 2 of the 3 posts of the art that inspired it here and here. I’ll link the missing post as soon as I find it.

so um, warnings for vomit, cussing, and over-eating-ish and mentions of drinking. and I also am not editing it because im super lazy so its in the same glory as it was when i posted it years ago (2012 apparently)

2,864 words, apparently.

“Come on people! When I say I want you all mobilized in fifteen I don’t mean in half a damn hour. I mean twenty minutes ago.” Fury fumed over the intercom from his station on scene. His voice bounced off the inside of the transport van and rung through each individual earpiece. “Rise and shine, ‘cause we are in a fucking war against some baddies if you haven’t all noticed. You are my agents and I am expecting you to do your damn jobs at my order.”

“Load of fucking shit,” the sniper agent to Clint’s left mumbled, “two a.m. wakeup call is horseshit. I just finished a mission and got back at ten last night.”

“Yeah, welcome to S.H.I.E.L.D brother, what did you think this was? Day camp?” Clint double checked his packet was still together. He’d read it once they got to their positions, it was too dark inside the van. He shook his head a bit when the other agent went back to fuming. Running on low sleep was nothing, sure the headaches and fuzziness were a pain in the ass sometimes but it’s not hard to get used to. You have to get used to it in this job. Same with messed up schedules on basically everything. They would get an hour tops to set up and get ready for a long haul on their stations.

What he managed to make sense of before climbing in the back of the vehicle through his sleep-fogged mind was that they needed to be ready for anything by three thirty, three forty five at the latest with the other crew up ahead of them set up. He rubbed his face trying to wake up more, must be all the time he’s spent on normal schedule lately, it was causing a real issue. He wasn’t looking forward to the no doubt shitty and militant type food they were all going to have for breakfast within the next hour either. He was getting soft on the new routine of near-normal sleep and actual tasteful food instead of vacuum packed crap made for boosting endurance.

He leaned back to try and get into the mindset for the day. It was going to be a very very long one. Someone mentioned they might be stuck out there until seven that night. By then they’d have relief agents come in to give them a break, but as Hawkeye, well he was probably expected to stay around. Most teams wouldn’t shelf their best shooter if they could help it. He’d probably get a nap in at some stationed area. Though the accidental nap he got on the way there wasn’t something he completely cursed even though he didn’t like the fact of it.

“Alright, come on move out you all got a lot to go over and not much time.” The voice crackling into his ear is what startled him awake, and the hatch of the van swinging open definitely helped make that happen faster. Keeping near silent, everyone filed out and headed into the building while Agent Hill took control of their transport and directed it to their station a little ways away hidden in a different building.

Everyone was handed a pack; filled with the shitty food and bottles of water for their posts, their weapons if they hadn’t brought any and extra ammo and pieces if they did, additional intel for their briefing packages according to pay grade, and some quick hushed instruction to where they were all to be.

Clint took his without a word and made his way to his post. Abandoned, or purposefully emptied, industrial building and the usual sort of interior. Too much moving about would give away his position on the metal catwalk. He had a few windows to observe through and a railing to his back. He dropped his pack as lightly and quietly as he could and set himself facing the railing to observe everyone being dispatched while he read over his briefing package.

Exact sort of thing he expected since they woke him up. Nothing too big, but big enough to require a lot of force if anything went bad. He was given another radio code with instructions to call the other Avengers if things turned too ugly. And it was going to be a long-ass day. No break in sight until afternoon if they were lucky. He ripped open the first package of… well. He opened the first nutritional packet and set to work on it mindlessly while he kept reading and rereading. This was coded, but memorizing it and burning it was always his procedure.

By the fourth read through he was nearly done the second pack. Best to eat as much as he could, as much as he hated it and was off-put by eating at such a strange time after the Avengers got together. Professional agent Clint Barton, code name Hawkeye, sharpest shooter as they came- but totally useless without a sugar rush to start him at this time of night, and hell to deal with if he crashes afterward. Carbs, protein, sugar. The three biggest and most annoying things to eat right now, low on time and rushing to compensate for his mental sluggishness at this hour.

He startled himself with a small belch and nearly dropped everything. He did a quick scan and everything seemed normal. Confused for a second longer as to the origin of the sound, he came to the realization when he hiccupped. Ah. Right. He was eating, and apparently at the speed he was reading if the blooming discomfort in his slightly distended abdomen was anything to go by. He took a swig of the only soda from his pack, no doubt put there as a favor from a very sneaky woman. He let it fizz up in his mouth before swallowing it.

New diet. That’s another thing he reminded himself to update S.H.I.E.L.D on before the next mission. He downed some more soda and let the carbonation work its way back out in a few more small burps. It was definitely a good feeling. He just had to work the rest of the air out before the mission started. No big deal.

“Relax Barton,” He shifted in his new ‘nest’, “nothing you haven’t had to do before. Good to know I can still get mission jitters, heh. Maybe this’ll be fun.” He wanted it to be. He definitely wasn’t expecting this call when he decided to turn in early last night. He tried to tell himself the slight trembling feeling, not that he’d let his hands shake at all if it could be helped, was from nerves. Big man in the world now, sure, but unexpected missions always had excitement to them. Sometimes it left you a little shaken in the best ways. Not that he was sure how good this sort of shaken felt yet, all he could say for certain was that it was strange.

He shrugged his shoulders and straightened out before packing away the left overs and digging out a lighter to burn the paper with. The wind howled a little outside, bringing to his mind the chill of the night.

An hour later had him leaning lazily at a windowsill; nothing happened yet that needed his attention or intervention. He kept flitting his eyes about in a restless sort of way, glancing about but never focusing too long and trying to keep that trembling, tingling feeling filling him up at bay. He thought back to the night before, and about being so tired.

“See anything?” Another agent’s voice crackled through his earpiece. He pressed down on his microphone button to reply.

“Not a damn thing,” he drawled, “Anything from your sights?”

“Nothing yet,”

He let up off the mic and sighed. He felt his body buzz again in a wave under his skin and couldn’t help but shake his shoulders trying to get it out. Part of his mind nagged at him with a reminder of feeling distinctly unwell last night.

Drinking. Stark roped us all into it. Thinks just because he has a miracle liver means we all do.

Though it was harder to remind himself of that when he had to shake his shoulders and head again to fight off a wave of fuzziness.

It wasn’t for another forty-five minutes, and three updates from Fury himself, until Barton had something to hold his attention. He was crouched low at his post and grabbed at the shirt over his stomach as another wave of pain and sudden nausea shot through him. Sure he’d started idly rubbing his stomach a little earlier; he was getting butterflies was all. Usually something happened by now when they got this many people out that fast. He was getting more nervous the entire time, who didn’t when it came to performance issues? He was still having trouble focusing on the vast nothingness happening today by the time the butterflies started. But now this was throwing him off.

“Any news yet? Getting real bored up here,” he clicked the mic off after and waited.

“Nothing. Should be another hour at most. Getting antsy there, a little flighty? Ha.”

“Ha. Leave the jokes to someone who can handle them, Keith.” He turned down the radio and double checked the microphone was off when he curled up tighter into himself and put his head against the sill as another wave of discomfort washed over him.

Eventually, he had to get back up and in proper position. He felt a bit better after some time elapsed and figured as long as he didn’t over do anything and stayed relatively well hydrated he’d be good enough. He turned the radio back up and opened his water bottle as he slid back into the favored hiding position he found where he could stand full height without being seen. Another hour tops and he’d have something in his sights…

Hawkeye swallowed hard and backed away from his post. This was getting a little ridiculous. He stepped back until the guard rail pressed into his back. He hazarded a quick glimpse over before having to go back to staring at part of the wall to calm his roiling stomach, but his eyes didn’t miss a thing. All S.H.I.E.L.D’s other snipers were still focused at their stations. No other agents or personnel were in the area. He figured it was safe enough to sit down for a little and wait this out. Again.

He dropped slowly and cautiously, trying not to upset anything further, and dropped his legs over the side. He pressed his forehead to the cool metal of the guard rail and tried to focus on breathing evenly. At least if it all went to hell, it would go right the hell off his platform. Damn, even some personal snark wasn’t helping anything.

He shut his eyes tight and willed himself not to moan out-loud. Getting seen and getting heard were two ways to royally fuck up in this job, and now were also two ways to grab unwanted attention and ridicule over his gastric distress. His snaked one arm around the bar running at chest level and pulled his head down to lean heavily on it, holding it for dear life if his whitened knuckles were anything to go by. Clint’s other hand rested lightly on his stomach, too nervous to even try and ease the nausea by rubbing or curling up this time. By how ragged his breathing sounded, even trying to call in now wouldn’t work. His jaw felt glued together anyway, he really didn’t trust opening his damn trap for anything. Static fizzled over his earpiece and some other agents gave short updates.

After a few minutes with no relief Clint resigned that he might just actually lose it here. He shoved the microphone back and double checked it was switched off. Still on the right channel so just in case they did need him it was easy to radio back, he couldn’t back out but like hell he could get up right now. His stomach lurched and gurgled, leaving him coughing a little into his hand to stifle the sound and hopefully to help keep everything down. He felt a rush of stifling heat and sweat beaded on his neck.

Did he mention this was going to be a long-ass night?

“Got someone moving.” Clint perked up as best he could in this situation. Not the best idea, he shuddered and folded forward a bit more. He groped blindly for the water bottle he had been taking sips from to help quell the nausea with until now. He popped it open with his teeth and waited for someone else to give up more information. Nobody would realize he wasn’t looking right now, they’d all be too busy searching their own areas and figuring he was either doing the same or trained on the target already.

“Can’t see them.” Clint groaned aloud, unable to help it. He took another sip from the bottle, but just ended up spitting it out.

“I swear I will never say anything bad about anyone ever again…” he started mumbling to himself disjointedly. Promising things to any deity he ever heard of, cursing them all out.

“It’s the Director. No worries, everyone,” Agent Hill came over the comms. “He and I are double checking parts of the perimeter. The targets shouldn’t be this far back at all.”

“Fuck. Fuck everything and the damn horse it rode in on,” he swallowed hard and tried to ignore the burning at the back of his throat.

“Confirmed. It is Director Fury and Agent Hill.”

Radio silence returned for another stretch of time. Felt like almost another hour. Clint spat down on to the floor below again. Finally giving in to the urge to wrap his arm tightly around his middle, he rocked himself slightly to see if it helped. It did for a small moment. He let out a shaky sigh and glanced back over at the windows where the sun was now creeping up through the clouds of dirt and grime on the glass. He considered moving back a bit and laying down before radioing in his distress, but not before he was sure it was something he could handle. After a few more intense seconds he decided that was the best plan of action.

After about four more seconds his stomach decided that was a stupid idea and he needed to keep his ass very still right the hell where it was. And less than a second after that, Barton was parting with a good portion of his stomach’s contents. There was no elegant or quiet and stealthy way to cover that. He retched. He shut his eyes and shook a little harder after the fact. Resting his head, defeated, on the railing again, he Clint tried to work up the strength and his voice well enough to call it in if someone wasn’t already beating him to it.

“Damnit Barton,” Fury’s voice vaulted up to where Hawkeye was slumped, “What the hell?!”

Clint opened his eyes slowly, he shook a little more in some vague form of terror that filtered through his sickened mind. He scooted back a bit, ignoring the wet dripping of his own vomit onto the floor below. He pulled the mic piece down and flicked it on.

“Sorry sir, Agent Hawkeye reporting,” his voice shook, wavered and cracked a little, but still carried over the radio and down from his nest, “I think I’m a little under the weather.”

“Well no fucking shit.” Agent Hill had retreated a number of steps from Fury and the mess surrounding him. She pulled her clipboard up and started flipping through pages while putting out a radio call for a med truck and a replacement. If he had felt any better, Clint would have laughed at the absurd sight, but unfortunately he was back to fighting to keep down what was left in his stomach. “If you’re gonna do that again I’d like some damn warning.”

All Hawkeye could manage for warning was a quick ‘move-aside’ hand motion before leaning through the gap in the rail again and vomiting once more. By now everyone in the building knew what was going on and were switching radio channels and trying to ignore the sounds of Clint losing it all over the cemented floor.

After a third bout of being sick, Clint was left dry-heaving and limp against the fever-warmed metal. Too shaky to even hold the water bottle that hadn’t left his side today, leaving it to fall below him too when he tried to grab it. Within minutes two medical technicians were helping him down from his nest. He felt so shaky and wrung out he didn’t even attempt to fight them over being taken out on a stretcher. He just laid on his side and curled in on himself as they pushed him past Hill and Fury, who was still cleaning himself up.

“Next time spare us the damn show and call it in before the firework finale, alright?”

“Got it.”

#sick clint barton #vomit tw #avengers sickfic #lmk what other tags yall want or need on this #this'll be a tumblr only fic tho i might revisit it and rewrite it for ao3 #so its a super fun surprise for you guys #also a throwback

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austerre-moved · 7 years ago

Text

It was usually her, she thought, asleep in bed when Seto came home from a midnight trip to the office, and HIM who had slipped away in the middle of the night when she would not notice his absence. Today, though, it was her turn to stand in the doorway of their room, silently drinking in the sight of him reclined against their pillows. Even in sleep, he sometimes looked to be frowning – now was one of those moments, and it only strengthened her belief in her choices.

As quietly as she could, Natalie slipped into the room, setting the stack of reports that she held atop the bedside table. In them, he would find confirmation of the completion of several projects – the reason she had left, last night, like a thief in the dark. She’d been working on speeding up their progress all week, behind his back. It hadn’t been an easy task, as he was so stubbornly determined to do everything himself, but she had the benefit of organizing his schedule, to keep him away from anyone who would spoil the surprise. With any luck, he hadn’t noticed what she had been doing, and the work that had been completed would be enough to soothe him into staying home. She knew that he didn’t like to; he was always so concerned about the work that needed to be finished while he was away, it distracted him from the goal of actually relaxing. This, though, would leave him hard pressed to find a justification for going into the office – and it wasn’t as if Mokuba hadn’t taken over for him before, while he was away on business. Natalie had worked tirelessly to ensure that Mokuba’s day ran smoothly without them, and the younger Kaiba was more than happy to take care of things during the day. He would be meeting them for dinner, of course, but until then, Seto would be relaxing. ( Whether he wanted to, or not. )

A day off was not the only gift she had for him, though. Beyond the meal she planned to cook for him and Mokuba both that evening, she aimed to try to work the tension out of Seto’s shoulders. She would have arranged for a professional to come, but thought perhaps it would be nicer for them to not have to swear them to secrecy, as they did all outsiders who entered their home. She didn’t want him to have to deal with the world, or their prying eyes, or keeping their secret. She just wanted to help him to RELAX.

She wanted to fill their tub with water and bubbles and slip in beside him, soaking away his stress and eating strawberries like they were in some vomit inducing chick-flick. She wanted to show him the post on twitter that requested the fan gifts that he had no use or desire for to be sent to the various orphanages, in lieu of gifting anything to him. She wanted to walk the property and hold his hand and listen to him talk about anything at all – his dragons, his brother, his precious few favored memories…

She wanted to give him a day where HE was all that mattered. Not the company. Not winning. Not his reputation or taking care of his brother or even having to give HER attention. Just… him. She suspected he hadn’t had a day like that in quite some time.

There were, of course, physical gifts. He would find the first in his office the next day, where she’d installed some of the hologram projectors from the latest duel disc. He would have company there, now, in the form of three tiny blue eyes – programmed like cats, they were sure to at least momentarily entertain him as he worked. The second, she was still tentative to actually give. It was cupped within her palms, a tiny box that protected precious cargo. The ring inside was not meant to tie – she didn’t have the courage to propose to him, not even close. She did, however, want to give him something to wear, perhaps as… as a promise, of sorts. A reminder. Something that he could see on his hand and remember that, no matter the harsh words that were printed in response to his own harsh personality, no matter the way he felt about himself or thought that he deserved… She loved him. And nothing was going to change that.

It was a simple design, admittedly. A twist of silver that resembled his dragon’s crest, with a ribbon of blue across it’s face. The notable detail, though, was the engraving that lay within the band, hidden where none could see. She had struggled with what to write, wondering if she should leave anything at all. Her name seemed possessive, and their initials seemed corny. ‘Always’ was overdone, and their anniversary did not fall on his birth date. For days, she struggled to decide, but in the end realized that if it was meant to show he was beloved… then that was exactly what she would have written.

The looping script of her own writing seemed dainty upon the sturdy band, but still yet bold and clear. Beloved, simple, and sweet – and true, no matter what fights they got in, or what his insecurities said. She was worried he wouldn’t wear it, admittedly, but… there was naught to do but to give it to him and find out. First, though, he needed to wake up.

Their usual alarm was set to go off shortly, so she didn’t feel bad for sitting down on his side of the bed, running her fingers gently through his hair to wake him. She was glad to see his frown disappear at her touch, and hoped he hadn’t noticed she was gone. As his bright eyes fluttered open, she smiled down at him, pressing a soft kiss upon his lips.

“Good morning, birthday boy… Don’t get up. Your schedule is mysteriously empty, today. I heard the VP was going to run meetings this morning, since all this work got done last night.” She nodded toward the stack of folders, and smiled once again. “I… have a gift for you, though. Even if you’re going to refuse to spend the day with me.”

With great care she lifted the box, pressing it into his hands as she realized she didn’t quite know how to explain it to him. Cheeks flushed faintly pink, she pulled her hands away from his, brushing hair behind her ear with a shrug.

“Happy birthday, my love. I… don’t know if it’s your style, but… I wanted to give you something to wear that would match most of your clothes. As… a promise, I guess. Of… how I feel.”

Tentative, she reached forward and clicked the lid open, her hand lingering upon his as the ring was revealed.

“I know you sometimes wonder why… but I love you, Seto. And whenever you think I might stop, or change my mind… you can have this, to remind you that I won’t. It’s not an ENGAGEMENT ring, a-and you don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it! But… I hope you will. And I hope that you’ll spend the day with me, because I left literally nothing for you to do at the office today and Mokuba is already going there after breakfast, and I’m trying REALLY hard to guilt you into it. Is it working..?”

majority of the world looked forward to a birthday, whether their own, or another’s. it was meant to be a day of joy and celebration, commemorating having survived another year, and in some cases, marking the beginning of something new. to anyone else, it may have been special— but seto kaiba was known to be out of the ordinary, for reasons outside of his sometimes bizarre fashion choices. his birthday was nothing special to him. he viewed it as a day no different from the other 364 of the year, besides the day he would begin filling out applications with a number one digit higher than the previous year, next to the designated ‘ age ‘ bracket. if anything, it soured his mood even more than usual, given it resulted in the grim remembrance of how he’d spent this day as a child. whereas others were given birthday parties, friends and family members invited to the monumental event to shower the birthday child in gifts and sugary confections, he had spent his, parentless and friendless, in an orphanage too full and hectic to care for individual days of birth. ——– and when gozaburo had slithered his way into the picture, loneliness turned into crippling resent. he came to hate his day of birth, deeming it a burden more than a blessing, as gozaburo was known to be increasingly abusive on that particular day, as a way of reminding the still young birthday boy that the world was a cruel place, and birthdays, just like every other day of the year, were meant for work. gifts came in the form of academic tasks - and ‘ birthday lashings ‘ were certainly a tradition, but not in the conventional sense. he spent more time on those days crying behind a house plant, ignoring the concerned voice of an even younger mokuba as he called out for his troubled brother, than he did celebrating what should have been a momentous occasion.

so, when natalie roused him awake a few moments early that morning, he thought nothing of it. truth be told, he hadn’t even remembered what day it was until she softly told him ‘ happy birthday, ‘ and even then, he stared at her bleakly, dread overtaking him alongside a fierce disinterest for whatever she had planned. ‘twas not that he was ungrateful for the things she did for him on occasions like this, just as he never turned mokuba away, despite the youth knowing his brother was hardly the type to celebrate, or accept gifts, but… he just couldn’t bring himself to slip on a mask, simply to hide how he truly felt for a day cloaked in misfortune, or to bother attempting to wash away the bitter taste that still remained on his tongue, despite being in his twenties, now, instead of his early teens. “ empty? “ there were a slew of questions he was tempted to throw her way, but he hadn’t a clue where to even begin. how— WHEN, w h e r e… ? ? ? she had been by his side the entirety of the week, as per usual, and while mokuba was more than acquainted with the tasks his older brother oft fulfilled, there was no way the small child had successfully completed them within the span of one week. not without his obsessively observant brother realizing the work was getting done under his nose, at least. already, he was shifting to rise from the bed, but the pressing of her palm against the chiseled exterior of his chest barred him from successfully doing so. a glance is shot towards the stack of folders she briefly gestures to, and for a moment, he can do naught else but stare at the thick collection in utterly raw bewilderment. all of this, simply so he can enjoy a work-free birthday. what type of crazed fools was he RELATED to ? ? ? god cards above, and then there were gifts— because of course. mokuba likely had his own collection to all but force upon the ceo at a later time, but first, he had to get through natalie’s. he would stomach it, solely because she was one of two people he absolutely hated upsetting, if he could help it, and as he took the box from her, crinkling his brow in silent confusion, he cast his gaze towards her awaiting expression, hoping she would reveal the contents of the box to him, or provide some explanation as to what, exactly, she had dared spend money on. “ you know i hate gifts, nat… there was no reason for you to… “ ——– and yet, his statement drops off, lost to a sudden case of speechlessness as he gazes at the glimmering ring. in one measly second, she has managed to take his breath away - funny, because stereotypically, was it not the male who was supposed to warrant such a reaction from the female? there he sat, though, staring at this heartfelt gift, with not a single word to say in response to it. try as he may, the words just wouldn’t come to him, the thrumming in his ears amplifying in volume the longer he scans over the individual detailing. no, this wasn’t his style… hadn’t been, more specifically, but… it was, now.

“ … as if this wasn’t bad enough, you had to go and say something like that… “ hopefully, she doesn’t take his statement the wrong way, for the tugging of his otherwise straight-lined lips into the most genuine of grins should be a dead giveaway that he speaks of her gesture fondly. he carefully removes the ring, turning it over between his thumb and index to examine its features in closer detail— and the more he gazes at it, the wider he smiles, seemingly forgetting it’s his birthday altogether. “ this is your handwriting, isn’t it… ? “ he’d always loved the way she wrote things, not that he ever told her. expensive as this had to have been ( and oh, how he hated EXPENSIVE gifts the MOST ), she had still managed to put a bit of herself into the small, circular jewelry, and of course, a lot of him. his favorite colors, his sense of style— it was all there, captured in this small piece of jewelry. again, it spoke of how well she knew him, and how much effort she put into pleasing him, when so many others would have given up on him by now. the box is placed atop the nearest nightstand, the ring slipped upon his finger and adjusted properly. it fit perfectly, as he expected, and for a moment, he couldn’t help but to trail his opposite finger over it— admiring it, still, even several minutes after the reveal. “ it’s funny… “ he began, looking at her now, that smile still dedicated in its effort to remain plastered on his face, “ … i usually hate things like this. i usually hate everything, everyONE, but you… i wholeheartedly believe, nat, that just like this ring, you were made for me. “ there’s a faint huff of laughter, then, as he leans over to press a kiss to her cheek, then a second, then a third, before he shifts slightly to capture her lips in a kiss far longer in duration. “ i love you… “ he utters breathlessly, pulling away almost hesitantly in order to rise. “ can you stay here a moment? i promise, i’ll come back. “ she hasn’t a choice— he slips from her side anyway, making sure he looks somewhat put together before journeying through the doors of his joined office. no doubt, she can hear the way he fumbles with the drawers of his desk, unlocking the bottom most one with a key only he possesses. nay, he has no reason to tug open this particular drawer majority of the time, the things he deems valuable locked away elsewhere, but this was… different from his dueling cards, and the documents that basically made his way of living a possibility. this, he had tucked away for some untold amount of time, well hidden and well preserved. call it cheesy and cliche, but he was quite tired of detesting his own day of birth, struggling to let go of things in the past and putting forth no effort to change things to make them better for the future. now, he figured, was a good a time as any to conquer this annual, depressing tradition. “ don’t laugh. just… listen to me for a few minutes. “ he urges her to the edge of the bed, his form towering over her as he remains standing— not to seem imposing or threatening, but his reasoning will be revealed in due time. “ i don’t think i ever told you of my adoptive father… at least, not in intricate detail. he is a large part of the reason i despite my birthday, and why i always try to make mokuba’s birthday a memorable day, if only to cancel out the negative from our childhoods. for years, i convinced myself i would never come to love someone, and in turn, that they would never come to love me. i made myself so purposefully undesirable, because i was afraid to get close to someone else - i’ve been hurt so many times in my life, nat… it was easier to be an asshole than it was to be friendly, yet somehow… somehow, you broke through all my defenses, and achieved the impossible. “ dare he laugh, as he remembers their rocky beginnings? the roller coaster that had been their relationship, and sometimes, still was? of their arguments, of takeshi, or their petty, spiteful, vengeful matches against each other… indeed, he dared laugh, because while they had been sour moments at the time, it spoke volumes of how far they had come, and how much she had put up with, in regards to him, and how much she was willing to continue to put up with. “ you… are my gift, every morning i wake up. i never know if you realize the way i smile at you from afar, or how you distract me with your sheer beauty without even having to try. i have nightmares of you leaving… of me LOSING you, somehow. i have nervous breakdowns, in private, when my mind gets the best of me, and i start thinking of all the ways i could possibly screw up something so damn good, and how CLOSE i’ve gotten to doing so on so many occasions… but you always seem to prove to me, in the biggest ways, that you’re here to stay. that my nightmares and panic attacks really are just products of my chaotic mind… the very one only you can put at ease. “ he’s nervous, and he hopes she can’t tell— by the gods, though, it’s practically written all over his face, in the way he can’t bring himself to look at her, and the anxious tugging of his lips between his teeth. even now, as he slowly lowers himself to one knee, tugging out a velvet wrapped box from behind his back, he wouldn’t be surprised if she could hear the way his heart HAMMERED beneath his chest, threatening to burst through at any given second. there is no going back, now, as he tugs the box open with the same hand that wears the ring she has given him, to reveal a ring of his own. thick, and practically drowning in platinum diamonds, a large one at the center, with miniature ones rounding the ring itself. “ i still don’t know what you see in me, natalie arrington, and i still think you deserve so much better than whatever i have to offer you— but i don’t want you to find better. i realize that now… i realized that forever ago, honestly, but i was too afraid to let my emotions get the better of me. i was afraid of feeling weak, and vulnerable, and ridiculous, but… if that’s what happiness is… if that’s what LOVE is, then i am perfectly fine feeling weak, and vulnerable, and ridiculous, if it means i get to be with you. so i ask you this, on my birthday… on a day that, despite me hating gifts, i am once again reminded of what a beautiful, pure, marvelous gift you are, to me… i ask you, princess… will you marry me? “

#condomglitter #[ What is formatting?#Fuuuuuuuuuck that I'm lazy and I'm too busy screaming right now to worry about that #FORGIVE ME. IT WAS TOO PERFECT OKAY??? ]#submission

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