#not posting this to try and scoop human translations or anything

[porcupine-girl]

Full Text of Xiao Zhan GQ Interview via Apple Translate

I took @tdkeh's screenshots of the interview and ran them through Apple translate, results below.

COVER STORY Cover Story

The studio was by the Huangpu River in Shanghai. Xiao Zhan was wrapped in a black down jacket, took off his shoes, and sat cross-legged in the corner of the sofa. He looked very relaxed. The shooting came to an end for the time being. Although he had been working for more than 7 hours in a row, there was no trace of fatigue on his face.

This is a face that attracts attention all the time. A few months ago, the studio posted a group of Xiao Zhan's birthday blockbusters, and immediately sharp-eyed netizens found that the face had "rounded". In order to play the role of Guo Jing in the film "The Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Great" directed by Xu Ke, before entering the group, Xiao Zhan gained weight, his cheeks were no longer so thin, and his figure was obviously strong. In the photo, he had a hawthorn, showing a slight vicissitudes of life.

Strictly speaking, "The Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Great" is Xiao Zhan's second film. Guo Jing's role has many pearls and jade in the previous version. His

On the day of shooting the cover of Zhizu GQ, Xiao Zhan got up early and ran. He couldn't help thinking, "Oh, my God, I'm sweating so much that I'm going to lose muscle again, right?

He struggled with whether to continue or not, and finally decided to run for 30 minutes. When the time was up, he thought that his body fat began to consume after 30 minutes, and he ran for another 10 minutes.

Everything is for work." In fact, I don't want to run. Running will lose muscle, but I have to run to reduce the swelling. After the shooting, he planned to do weight training no matter how late it was. The actor's self-cultivation is ready to create an image for the character at any time, but he must strictly control his diet and manage his figure. Xiao Zhan regarded both as professional norms and asked for himself.

Before the meeting, I thought that Xiao Zhan would be very cautious about the interview. Surprisingly, Xiao Zhan had a rare sense of relaxation, answering questions, and even a little humorous. When he mentioned that the actor had to observe the characters in his life, he took the opportunity to comment on the sitting posture of several people present. When asked what happened after entering the industry, he didn't expect that his answer was that he could not eat what he wanted to eat like his high school classmates.

The interview lasted for nearly two hours. I was curious. In the past few years, Xiao Zhan has been under great attention. What kind of experience is it for him?

Xiao Zhan said that many times, he has forgotten this matter and has not caused him much trouble in his life. The most "cruel" thing may be that "you can't eat freely."

"I still sneak out to ride a bike, take a walk, and CityWalk. Only once, I just walked in the alley for 5 minutes and was recognized. I also went to the cinema and watched movies. No one will care about you, really. After leaving the Internet, many things will be solved. Sometimes the world is in front of us. This is a misunderstanding, but we can't avoid this misunderstanding, so there is nothing we can do.

He has a lot of things he wants to do, such as squeezing the subway and shopping malls. "I will really squeeze the subway. Maybe tomorrow, it's too normal. I used to take the subway every day." For Xiao Zhan, this is his real life. The voice of social media no longer bothers him. "It's been so many years, and I'm still troubled. Do I still live?

(Laughter) It's really okay."

At this stage, Xiao Zhan is very satisfied with his life. "I have a job, my own life, and an audience who likes me. There is nothing to be dissatisfied with."

To some extent, Xiao Zhan's sense of relaxation comes from a clearer and clearer goal. The voice of the outside world no longer bothers him. He knows what he wants and what he doesn't want. Now, he is doing more subtraction for himself. In the past two years, he has rarely been in variety shows, taking the profession of actor as the most important goal at present.

In 2023, three film and television dramas starring Xiao Zhan will be broadcast, and each role is a challenge for Xiao Zhan. In the interview, Xiao Zhan said that he was "under a lot of pressure" many times, and he would say so when reviewing almost every stage. But his tone is brisk, without the heavy feeling of complaining, and more like an after-mort analysis and summary. The reasons are often specific and objective: the first time he came into contact with no physical performance, the first time he took the lead alone, and the first time he acted in modern drama…

"The Sea in the Dream" is a script that Xiao Zhan especially likes. He likes the stories of that generation very much. When he was a child, he watched some film and television dramas, Days Related to Youth, Happiness Like Flowers. When it comes to the 1970s and 1980s, he felt that the sun was shining and colorful. Many people say that Xiao Chunsheng is perfect, but in Xiao Zhan's opinion, this is exactly his biggest problem. He thinks this character is very interesting and wants to try it. Xiao Chunsheng is a young man from Beijing. How to perform the momentum of the character and speak authentic Beijing dialect is a big challenge for Xiao Zhan, who has lived in Chongqing since he was a child.

The shadow character in "Yugu Yao" is cold, because he didn't want to live up to everyone's expectations for his ancient costume modeling. Before entering the group, Xiao Zhan tried his best to lose weight. Yugu Yao is the script obtained in 2020. In the range I can choose, this is the most complete and emotional script of the characters, and it is very logical and self-consistent, which is my best choice.

"The Hot Sun with Me" is the script that Xiao Zhan has been in contact with for the longest time. Since the end of 2019, Sheng Yang in "The Hot Sun with Me" has highly coincided with Xiao Zhan's career before his debut, but he has to move his life as a designer to the front of the screen in a natural and convincing way. He is not sure about "modern drama, life The play is really a strange field. At first, he was too eager to finish the words and memorized them well. When he said it, it would make people feel that no one would talk like this in life. Later, he found that the lines in modern dramas were broken and which words were put in stress. The logic was actually very strong.

In the past few years, he has played soldiers, doctors, designers, and Beijing youth. "There is no special consideration, it's all natural." He rarely plays repetitive roles. However, when choosing the script, Xiao Zhan will not deliberately avoid the themes he has played before, but just put himself from the perspective of the audience to feel whether he can be moved by it.

In 2021, Xiao Zhan starred in the drama "Dream Like a Dream" and played the role of Patient No. 5. On the day of the premiere, many topics related to the play appeared on Weibo hot search.

Brown vests and trousers are all Gucci.

COVER STORY Cover Story

Starring in Dreamlike Dreams, Xiao Zhan hesitated for a long time. There are many reasons for hesitation: he is from Chongqing. He is a non-professional. He can't play NG for 8 hours. Dream Like a Dream is also very famous. There are many classic versions of the role of Patient No. 5. But after reading the script, Xiao Zhan felt that he must act.

Drama is a very pure thing. Dozens of people or even hundreds of people gathered in one space to tell a story. This is an impossible experience of filming and television dramas. Xiao Zhan yearns for it. He began to recite his lines crazily and locked himself in Tangshan and rehearsed with the whole crew for more than a month, one after another.

"I was very nervous in the first performance, and now I'm very nervous when I think about it. Gu Xianglan rang the bell, and I was excited." The moment the light hit his body, Xiao Zhan felt that everything was still. He could not see the expression of the audience, and there was only white in front of him.

Xiao Zhan adjusted his breath and began to speak his lines. The director said that the opening actor grasped the rhythm of the whole story, so every time he said that line, it was the most nervous time for Xiao Zhan. As he spoke, he would slowly forget to be nervous. After saying that, he breathed a sigh of relief and thought, ah, it's finally over.

Once, at the end of the first half, patient No. 5 took a picture and an address and went to the stage to find Gu Xianglan, with a large monologue. Walking to the middle of the stage, Xiao Zhan suddenly broke up. He couldn't remember the beginning of the next word. After hesitating for about 1.5 seconds, he chose to skip the word and continue. The audience should not be able to see it, he thought. He didn't remember the word until the end of the performance.

"I can't remember when I get to the lounge. I looked through the script and found that it was this word."

"A very common word, for example, drinking pure water, I'm thinking about what kind of water to drink? Distilled water? Tap water? Boiled water? I just can't remember. Be like

Performance is a very deep knowledge. Xiao Zhan said, "At present, I just touched a little fur." When shooting "The Hot Sun with Me", the actors were all experienced actors. In terms of acting skills, Xiao Zhan was still very young. If he tried too hard, it was easy to leave traces. He told himself to "design less", feel everything the other party threw to him, and reacted honestly.

Xiao Zhan once expressed that due to his life experience, many characters have difficulties in understanding. He discussed this issue with his predecessors, "Everyone also has two statements. Some people say that of course you have to experience it. If you don't have experience, you don't have a picture. How can you play it? What you play is fake. There is also a voice saying that everything can be solved by technology.

Xiao Zhan's own answer is "play more, get in touch with all types" and "work with more good teams, actors and directors".

"To be honest, what I can do now can only be touched by my mind. It's a little difficult for me to play things that have no concept at all. Maybe in the future, I will solve my confusion through a work or cooperation with more good directors and actors. I look forward to this day coming soon.

03 Broken away

Relaxation is Xiao Zhan's side. He can balance part of the pressure, but some of it is difficult for him to resolve. Xiao Zhan didn't sleep very well. "It's hard for me to fall asleep, and

I often dream of filming on the spot, but I can't shoot well.

When I go to different cities, Xiao Zhan will bring the same pillow and quilt. "I will bring everything that can make me sleep well." He also tried Yanyan lamp, lavender essential oil, all kinds of medicine that will fall asleep on his body, spray on the pillow that will fall asleep, melatonin, meditation music, and finally found that what could make him sleep well were eye masks, earplugs and no mobile phones. "Because I know that if I see it, then don't sleep, just get up."

Not long ago, Xiao Zhan found an old book "Duan She Li" at home. When I was a designer, the boss of the company recommended it to him. The concept of life sorting in the book made Xiao Zhan rethink what he wanted and what he should give up.

There is a special aspect of Xiao Zhan's personality. "If I insist on something, I think it's right, and it's hard to be convinced." For example, he decided to be an actor. He didn't want to do anything other than an actor. "If you force me, then let's argue. No one is right or wrong, and the team is also for your good. Isn't it a good thing to have a lot of work? But for me, I have to do subtraction, because some things are really not what I want.

Xiao Zhan's milk elimination experience began to be the next "Da Neng Tea Human Resources Forbidden Mother's Happy; Salvation. At the age of 24, he participated in the show and started to dance as a male group.

He made his debut, acted in online dramas, and played a supporting role in cinema movies. Until the fire in 2019, Xiao Zhan also became a high-profile star.

If you decide to do something, you should do your best. This is Xiao Zhan's education since he was a child. When he went to junior high school, his family bought him a mobile phone. At the beginning of text messages, he often replaced punctuation with spaces, and his father said to him very harshly, "What about punctuation? Why is there no period at the end of the sentence?" From that time on, Xiao Zhan was very concerned about punctuation.

Since he was a child, Xiao Zhan has been competitive. He doesn't want to miss any opportunity in what he can control. When he took the bus when he was in school, he would

The man in the car who passed the station because he was asleep was anxious.

For things that can't be controlled, he will remind himself not to compete and learn to accept them. Until then, do what you can.

I have also experienced the interview and entered the last round. I have had a makeup audition, but it was replaced. Of course, there will be a brush book handed over now, but Xiao Zhan always tells himself that they only have the intention and can hand it to many people at the same time. When he meets what he really likes, he will take the initiative to meet the director and explain his understanding of the role.

Black printed shirt Egonlab

Black jumpsuit Zickness

COVER STORY Cover Story

Xiao Zhan felt that it was very important to have a correct attitude.

Xiao Zhan's growth environment is the same that of many post-90s generation. Mom and Dad go to work, and Grandma cooks at home. He goes to and from school every day. If his exam results are not good, he will be beaten.

After dinner at 6:30 every night, the children will call him downstairs to play hide-and-seek, wooden man, and throw sandbags. Speaking of this, he will be swayed. These ordinary little things are now very precious. Xiao Zhan said that he was very grateful for the life of not breaking into the entertainment industry in the past 23 years. "I cherish it very much. I think it's good." He thought that if he hadn't entered the entertainment industry, he would live like his classmates and friends to eat with customers every day and stay up late to catch up with the design.

"Being seen" is a happy thing. No matter how busy the work is, Xiao Zhan never complains, "If you have a job, then work hard." When shooting "The rest of my life, please give me more advice", he was also recording the variety show "Our Song". During the interval of waiting for the scene, he wore headphones and hummed softly. Other actors came over curiously. Xiao Zhan smiled shyly and explained the song he was going to sing at night. No time, I really don't have time." At that time, work occupied almost all of his life.

Xiao Zhan rarely takes the initiative to give himself a holiday. "It's unrealistic," he said categorically. When he is most tired, he can fall asleep while sitting on the set.

This year, Xiao Zhan has a sense of urgency of "too little acting". "Compared with some predecessors, they have performed a lot of works in their thirties." Xiao Zhan knew very well that he could not rely on a play, and his acting skills took a big step forward. "This may be difficult for me to happen to me."

He once thought about whether to be an actor with a personal style or an actor that the audience will like. His answer is the latter, "Everyone may not be your fans, and they don't even have a special cold for you, but I know, he has broadcast a play. Do you want to watch it? His plays are all good. I want to do this. This is my current goal. Can you be the level of the actor I like? It's a long way to go. Take your time." More filming and teamwork with more good teams. At present, there is only one goal, and the rest will not be considered for the time being. Xiao Zhan said.

Q&A talk about performance

Zhizu GQ: When will it be clear to be an actor?

Xiao Zhan: When the public is paying more and more attention to me, I want to say, why can't I? I think I can.

Sometimes it shakes and I think it's so difficult. Why can't I do it? For example, the lines, why are the lines not good, and why can't the lines be said? Because I'm a southerner? I don't think so. Then I will think, how can I say it well? I can do it. Try it.

Zhizu GQ: In your opinion, what are the professional standards for actors?

Xiao Zhan: First of all, you are professional. This is a topic that can't be avoided. You can be a non-professional, but your business ability is excellent. This is what I want to do and what I am currently doing. I don't think I'm enough. It's too far away.

After being professional, attitude and love are also very important. Do you only treat it as a job or do you really like it? These are two concepts. If you just do a job, you may not be able to go far. But if you really like it, you will cry and laugh for it, which may be the motivation for you to stick to it.

And a strong body (laughs). In the past, I didn't feel tired when I was in my twenties, but now I will be very tired after staying up late. This is a terrible thing. It is important to have a strong body. This is your foundation.

Zhizu GQ: When you play which role or play, do you feel recognized?

Xiao Zhan: At the beginning, when it was His Royal Highness the Wolf, there was a lot of pressure at that time. The acting teacher would give me a lot of advice and guidance, and kept overturning Bai Ji's performance every day. It was a period of confusion. After you survive, you will find that you have grown up. After acting, you will gradually find a little feeling, and then come step by step. This is a cumulative process.

I think I act too little. Compared with some predecessors, they have performed a lot of works in their thirties. I still have too few works now, and I don't have enough accumulated enough.

Zhizu GQ: Will you be in a hurry?

Xiao Zhan: Yes. Because I think (improving acting skills) is a cumulative process. You can't take a big step by a play. This is difficult for me to happen, so you have to keep filming, but keep making good scenes and don't consume yourself.

Zhizu GQ: What are the reasons for the expansion of the three film and television dramas broadcast in 2023 from ancient costume dramas to period dramas and urban dramas?

Xiao Zhan: In fact, there is no consideration. It's a natural occurrence. I didn't deliberately avoid the theme I played before, but read the script. The script handed over at that time, I felt that I was attracted by a script at the moment, so I chose it, but it happened to be a theme that had not been played before.

Zhizu GQ: Will there be a sense of burnout when acting in ancient costume dramas?

Xiao Zhan: There are also many types of ancient costumes. Don't distinguish it from ancient costume dramas and modern dramas. It's just sticking a headgear and changing clothes. In fact, the core is the same, but the shell is different.

Zhizu GQ: The drama you made has been broadcasted. Will you watch it by yourself?

Xiao Zhan: I won't watch it, but I will watch it. I will choose the scene that I care about very much, which can be regarded as finding problems for myself.

Zhizu GQ: Will you open the bullet screen to watch it?

Xiao Zhan: I used to be really good at it. I felt very happy and laughed with everyone, but now I don't know how to open it.

Zhizu GQ: What kind of role do you want to play now?

Xiao Zhan: If I can choose, of course it's the best I haven't tried. I need freshness. If you do the same thing every day, you will be annoyed.

Zhizu GQ: What kind of actor do you want to be?

Xiao Zhan: I want to be an actor that the audience likes.

Zhizu GQ: Don't you have done it to make people like it?

Production: @Imperfect Studio

Clothing assistants: EKko, Shi Yawen, Ren Yixuan, Chen Yiyang

Xiao Zhan: No, no, I don't think it's enough. I once thought about whether to be an actor with a personal style or an actor that the audience likes. At present, I want to be an actor who likes the audience. You may not be a fan of you, and you are not particularly interested in you, but I know that he has broadcast a play. Do you want to watch it? His plays are all good. I want to do this. This is my current goal. Whether it can become the level of my favorite actor is a long way to go. Take your time.

Zhizu GQ: What are your favorite actors?

Xiao Zhan: Many, for example, Zhou Xun has always been my favorite actor. I watched her play (The Sea of Anger) recently. It's really great.

Zhizu GQ: What are your plans for your career in 2024?

Xiao Zhan: More filming and working with more good teams. At present, there is only one goal, and the rest will not be considered for the time being.

Talk about life

Zhizu GQ: Will the voice on social media bother you?

Xiao Zhan: It's not bothering. It's been so many years. I'm still troubled. Do I still live? ( (Laughter) It's really okay. I just need to know exactly what I'm doing. Every time you make a choice, you should clearly know what you are doing, what you want to give up, and what you want to do. So, it's okay, there may be more troubles for the team.

Zhizu GQ: Isn't your private life affected?

Xiao Zhan: Very normal! I can go out for a bike and a walk. When you walk on the street, no one really cares about you. It's really not what everyone thinks. Then I walked around freely.

Zhizu GQ: Is this a time to escape for you?

Xiao Zhan: It's time to relax. Why should I escape? I'm also in the third dimension. Where should I escape? This is my life. I'm the same as everyone else.

There are many things I really want to do, such as squeezing the subway and shopping malls, which are very similar to when I used to go to school. Maybe I will do it in the future.

Zhizu GQ: Will you miss the life of ordinary people?

Xiao Zhan: It's not that I miss it, but that I think I should do it. It's popular. I will really squeeze the subway. Maybe tomorrow, it's too normal. I used to take the subway every day. For me, there is nothing I can't do. What do you think I can do? Say hello and then leave. It's nothing more than that I don't want to cause confusion, trouble, and cause a bad response.

Talk about personality

Zhizu GQ: You haven't been on variety shows in recent years. Is this a conscious choice?

Xiao Zhan: Because it is not suitable, with my personality, I am too tired in the variety show. I will want to take care of everyone's feelings and make myself very tired. Since you know it's such a result, don't do it at all.

Zhizu GQ: What is your original intention to enter the entertainment industry?

Xiao Zhan: I really broke in inexplicably and ignorantly. How did you get to this point when you used to watch the talent show to interview those top-ranked players? The contestant said that I accompanied my friend to participate in the selection, but my friend lost the election, and I chose it. When I was a child, I felt that these were far away from me, but when I came to myself, it was really like this. I thought it was amazing. I took part in the draft, and then I came to the present, that's it. It's wonderful. Life is really interesting.

Zhizu GQ: What are the things that I didn't expect before after entering the industry?

Xiao Zhan: It's cruel not to eat freely. When I see that my former high school classmates already have children and are fat, I will sigh that I also want to eat freely like this. Their living condition will make me feel that if I hadn't chosen this road at that time, maybe we would all be the same. We have to socialize and stay up late to design. You don't know how tired it is to do design, but life is like this. There is nothing we can do.

Zhizu GQ: How does choosing this road change you?

Xiao Zhan: Maybe there is a lot of lack of life experience. At this point, my classmates and friends are far more than me. What they have experienced is real things. There is no seat for you and no light. You are living your own real life.

Zhizu GQ: Are you an emotionally stable person?

Xiao Zhan: Xiang, right, stable, fixed. But once I touch some points, I will become very unstable.

Zhizu GQ: For example?

Xiao Zhan: It's just… something that can't be said, hehe. Maybe when something incredible happens, you will feel angry when what you are doing, or when something normal people don't do happens. It may be a matter of privacy. If this point is broken through, I will "run away". Everyone has their own boundaries, and some people don't have a sense of proportion. I will stay away from such people. But when the boundary is broken again and again and touches the bottom line, I will be very angry.

Zhizu GQ: You once said that you have a particularly strong side of your personality. What exactly do you mean?

Xiao Zhan: In principle, I am a very good person. If I insist on something, I think it is right, and it is difficult to be persuaded.

For example, I want to be an actor. I don't want to do things other than actors. If you force me, then let's argue. No one is right or wrong, and the team is also for your good. Isn't it a good thing to have a lot of work? But for me, I have to do subtraction, because some things are really not what I want.

Zhizu GQ: Do you have a perfectionist side?

Xiao Zhan: I just want to do it well and try my best now. Maybe the result is not good, but what should I do? That's all I can do.

Zhizu GQ: Can you accept failure?

Xiao Zhan: I can accept it. A few years ago, I may not be able to accept it, but 32-year-old Xiao Zhan has learned to accept it (laughs). Gd

[faeriekit]

Health and Hybrids (XIX)👽👻💚

[I can't remember the original prompt posters  for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and the prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]

PART ONE is here PART TWO is here PART THREE is here PART FOUR is here and PART FIVE is here PART SIX is here and PART SEVEN is here PART EIGHT is here PART NINE is here PART TEN is here PART ELEVEN is here PART TWELVE is here PART THIRTEEN is here PART FOURTEEN is here PART FIFTEEN is here PART SIXTEEN is here PART SEVENTEEN is here PART EIGHTEEN is here...nineteen...oy vey.

💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts (now featuring mediocre mouseover translations, only available on a computer)

Where we last left off... THE BART RETURNS! The earth rejoices! 🥳🎉 Physical therapy can be fun, even if it usually isn't!

Trigger warnings for this story:  body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) |  my nonexistent attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.

💚👻👽👻💚

Danny learns a few more words with practice.

Foda is simple. If Danny is hungry, he can ask for foda. It sounds exactly like food, and when he asks, they feed him.

…Or they up his IV. Which. Danny’s tongue might still feel sore and nasty, but the doctors and nurses and millions of minders don’t seem that mad when he sticks his tongue out at them. Sometimes they even laugh.

They don’t even sound all that mean.

It takes Danny a good chunk of waking time for him to realize that he…probably is hooked up to something he doesn’t want to think about, since all the efforts of lifting and moving him haven’t resulted in a single bathroom trip since he woke up here.

Firstly: horrible.

Secondly: his legs are super, absolutely, positively immobilized, and if someone doesn’t give him enough medication quickly enough after it wears off, Danny is very aware that something is deeply wrong with them.

So. Uh. That���s…gross.

He learns bealo just as quickly. He isn’t sure what bealo means, per se, but when he says it, they up his medication until Danny can pretend he doesn’t have any legs again.

God niht is goodnight, unless Danny is feeling snippy, and then it’s just niht.

…The one lady who minds him always says the whole thing, though. Even when Danny’s mean. Like the one time he threw his rocket at someone.

Or the time he started ignoring everyone when they tried to touch him.

…Or the one time he tried to freeze his IV bag, and put everyone on alert because if he’d been human, that would have seriously hurt him.

“Sorry,” Danny’d whispered, even if it wouldn’t mean anything to her.

She’d patted his hand and meant it. Danny’d had to dry his eyes with his wrist. “Eall es wel.”

Anyway.

Danny hates being in the freaking bed every hour of every day. So when his “sitting up” exercises turn into “hey, let’s try the wheelchair” practice, Danny gets so excited-slash-nervous that he kind of feels like he’s going to throw up all the liquids he’s been injected with.

None of the regular people try to lift him. Instead the lady does it herself, scooping Danny up in very strong arms, the golden cuffs on her wrists weirdly warm on Danny’s skin. When Danny’s settled, his legs sticking out real weird and his back kind of sore, he’s…out of bed.

He’s. He’s not in bed anymore.

And. Sure. It’s temporary, but it’s not the bed. Danny can wriggle, and he can sort of palm the wheels underneath him with the heels of his shaky hands, and he can see so much more of himself than he has in ages and ages.

For one. Both of his legs are in casts. That’s. Not good. He can’t feel it right now, but the sight of fully encased legs…

Well. If he can transform that won’t be a problem. If. If he has to escape. But it is…it’s super scary. He mostly remembers being captured, but the…the other people had been focusing more on his thoracic cavity and his face and head.

…So why are his legs so bad? Did something else happen?

(It did, didn’t it?)

(…Didn’t it??)

His hands shake, but there’s something to all that grip training, or else Danny wouldn’t be able to paw at his neckline to look down his own shirt. Or, well, his cloth nightie, anyway.

It’s good that he looks, since, well…his chest is glowing a solid green.

Whatever should probably be scar tissue. Uh. It…isn’t. There’re gouges down his chest and a crater where his heart should be that probably should be healing over, considering, you know, he’s not freaking dead at this exact second (mostly??), but. Instead of, like, healed flesh, or, say, his insides, there’s a transparent green…jelly… holding him together.

He can see how the green bounces with his heart beat.

...Danny drops the neckline of his gown. His breath comes in choking bursts, eyes pressed into his eye sockets—he feels sick.

He is sick. He has been sick.

The humans are keeping him here because he’s a freak of nature and he’s broken from head to toe and the Guys in White carved his flesh out of his body and opened him up like a can of cranberry sauce.

He presses his hands to his chest, to his stomach, just trying to breathe for long enough that he doesn’t throw up his oatmeal and occasional juice and IV nutrition onto the pristine floor of his sickroom. The people around him all make sympathetic noises that don’t help because he doesn’t know what they mean.

And then he feels something weird.

Not all the sensation in his fingers are back. It’s easier for him to feel impediments than it is to feel textures—something that blocks him from moving, rather than anything sensory-specific. He can usually tell when he touches fabric, because when he moves too far, it pulls tight around his hand. He can tell when he’s on something solid when his hand fails to go through it.

There is something solid sticking out of him.

Danny’s heartbeat quickens. It’s not. It’s. There’s something in him.

And it’s not—it’s so solid. When Danny brushes his hands against it, he can feel his skin and his flesh move with it, trying not to dislodge the thing embedded in him. It pulls at his skin. He doesn’t know what it is.

His fingers tremble as he tries to brush over the object through his gown, trying to figure out its shape from faulty touch alone. It’s like waking up to find himself jammed with needles all over again.

People are talking around them. Danny doesn’t try to listen in. He’s scared. He’s so scared. Something’s happened to him, and he didn’t even notice.

Some of it is—hard. There’s a crinkling sound when he moves. Danny manages to pull his gown neckline back again to catch something of a glimpse, and all he sees is plastic.

He doesn’t know what it is.

He doesn’t know who to ask. He can’t understand anyone and he doesn’t know if he trusts them.

They put something in him. There’s something embedded in him.

He thinks he’s going to cry.

Something touches his arm—Danny flinches. His core tightens with stress as he puts a metaphorical hand on the button, ready to run and hide at any notice.

It’s the lady. He knows her.

No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t know her at all. He can’t talk to her in any way that matters. She’s not a doctor. He doesn’t know why she’s here, or why she’s keeping him here.

She’s nice. She fed him. But is that all it takes to trick him? To make him compliant? Pliable?

She stops touching him when he gets scared, her eyes worried. She kneels—closer than Danny would like, probably, but she keeps her hands to herself. Danny’s heart races faster, out of order, starting and stopping and starting again like a bad engine.

“Eow eart wel?” she asks from his left arm rest, a common question, so softly. Danny doesn’t know what it means. “Eall es wel. Ænlic eow, ænlic me. Bruce bræð wið me?”

She takes a big, deep, breath. Her hand rises slightly over her chest, following an exaggerated movement. Don’t panic. Breathe. Breathe like me. One, two, three.

Danny’s breaths are more choked. More panicked.

But when she breathes, he breathes with her—even with every stutter in between.

“Hwæt es woh[O3] ?” the lady asks, so gently it’s almost a whisper. Her pointer finger hovers over his body, but doesn’t touch—and eventually, Danny figures out she probably wants to know where he’s hurting.

But he’s not hurting. He’s scared. There’s something inside him, and he isn’t sure what it is. He presses the heel of his hand to the object. He feels something rigid refuse to bend inside his flesh.

There’s something of recognition in the woman’s face. “Inne cwic tima,” she says, more certain of answers outside the room, and darts away,

Danny wants to bounce his bound leg. He feels awful when anyone is in the room with him, considering how little of them he knows, but, somehow, it’s so much worse when he’s actually alone.

When she comes back, there’s a second person who walks through the double doors with her, in blue scrubs with ducks on them. They wave to Danny.

Danny…blinks. He feels numb. It’s kind of a problem.

They take it in stride, though; in their hands is a blank board and a chunky marker. The cap comes off, the new person scribbles for a minute or so, and then turns the board around so that Danny can see.

It’s a…person. A rudimentary outline person, sure, with some visible bones and organs to fill in the person-shaped outline. Danny can recognize most of them from anatomy class, although those memories are more…personal, now. A little more painful.

The person taps on the board. The person points to Danny.

Danny frowns.

The person turns the board back around and makes some Pew, Pew, Pew! sounds with their mouth, occasionally opening and closing their hand over the board to match the noise. There’s some more scribbling. When the board turns back around, there’s a violent smudge of marker on top of the drawn person’s drawn intestines.

The person takes their covered pinky finger and erases a little neat circle of marker in the intestines, mostly favoring one side. They draw a little arrow from the hole to the general outside-of-the-person blank area. Then another circle, with a thicker circle inside.

Danny recognizes the object jutting out of him. Oh. This is how he got it.

The person—probably a doctor, Danny guesses, or the surgeon who did this to him—do these people even need credentials, actually?—hands the board over to the lady. They hold out ten outstretched fingers, marker under their arm, and make a show of counting every one of the outstretched fingers with the opposite hand. Then they take the board back.

And then, when they write on the board, Danny can actually understand what they say.

Or, well, it’s numbers! The numbers are the same as his—the line and a circle is clearly meant to be a ten, and the little x is a multiplication symbol— they draw a 10, as clearly and a brightly as it could be against a stark white board, and add a little x 7, probably to indicate a week; the result is ten suns times seven, or seventy suns.

Danny feels his heart bounce in his chest. Danny would bet a whole lot of money that the number is meant to be seventy days. There is an end point. It’s not that Danny is free to be subjected to random anatomical whims—there’s a goal here. This was purposeful.

The little circle-within a circle gets erased. The hole is scribbled through as if it was never there, and the person makes a weaving gesture with the marker that Danny is certain is meant to be sewing.

Tears prick at his eyes. The lady gets close by him again, but Danny lets her. His hands aren’t good enough for wiping tears the way he wants to, yet. Help and company are good.

She gives him a tissue from Danny's bedside table. He takes it with a whisper of a grip.

“Seventy?” Danny rasps, tearful. Hopeful. Terrified of hope. He practically jams the tissue into his eye sockets.

The lady’s eyes go wide. “Seventy,” she repeats, marveling.

It’s enough. Nothing is perfect, but it’s enough. And if Danny's allowed to spend so long in front of the space window that he falls asleep in his wheelchair, well. It's not like he was in charge of where they went.

[callsignspark]

soft-tober | 07 | Logan Lee

soft-tober is about experiencing the joys of October with loved ones. each day is a fall-related one-shot for one of the couples from my Dagger, Sword & Shield universe, plus a few extras! today is Logan and Kristinia with “It’s Halloween, why are you already putting up Christmas decorations?” from this prompt list.

If you’d like to be tagged for soft-tober, please send an ask!

word count: 1.4k

soft-tober masterlist | main masterlist | divider credit here

warnings: extreme fluff, pregnancy, this takes place in 2017 (pre-mission)

callsignspark disclaimer: my blog is an 18+ space; minors do not interact - you will be blocked. I do not consent to my work being copied, run through an AI generator, translated, or posted elsewhere. I do have an AO3, where I eventually will be cross-posting my works.

07. "It's Halloween, why are you already putting up Christmas decorations?"

Logan clocks that something is wrong the second he walks into the house. The first clue is that it’s messier than usual, evidenced by the pile of shoes he tripped over coming in. With two kids under seven and a third on the way, the house is in a constant lived-in state, but this is way more than that. His second clue is the half-decorated Christmas tree in the living room.

There’s no crying or screaming, and he can hear the kids laughing in the kitchen, so working on the assumption that everything is okay, he takes an extra moment to pull his boots off and tidy the entryway. Hanging up coats that had somehow made their way to the floor and putting the shoes back on the rack, a tiny human jumping on his back as he finishes.

“Daddy!”

“Hey, bud! What did you guys do while I was go-” Logan cuts himself off when he catches sight of his oldest wearing a turkey hat and a Santa beard. “Where did you get those?”

The six-year-old giggles and runs into the kitchen, where his little brother is scribbling in a coloring book.

“What’s going on, Tommy?” Yale follows, using his playful-stern voice, in hopes that the serious tone will get him an answer. He scoops up his three-year-old, tickling his little round tummy when he toddles over. “Tommy?”

Big brown eyes blink up at him, a gapped smile proudly declaring, “Mommy lost it!”

“Lost it!” Shawn echoes, shouting directly into Logan’s ear.

“You’re not supposed to be home yet!” All three boys snap their attention to the doorway, where Kristina Yang-Lee is standing, frazzled and breathing heavily.

“It ended up being a quick briefing. What’s going on? It’s Halloween, why are you already putting up Christmas decorations?”

Tears well up in his wife’s eyes, and unsure if it’s a side effect of being three months pregnant or something worse, Logan ushers the kids into the living room, promising pizza for dinner.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“No!” Kris sobs, plastering herself to her husband, scaring him.

Something happened to the baby.

“Kris? What happened? Is the baby okay? Do we need to go to the hospital?” His panic lowers slightly when she shakes her head, tears still streaming down her face. “I need you to breathe, hon.”

“You’re gonna be gone for Christmas!” She wails, swiping at her cheeks. “And Thanksgiving! And New Year’s! And Lunar New Year!”

Should have seen this coming.

He’s been deployed during unfortunate times before. Holidays. Anniversaries. He even missed Tommy’s birth; that had more to do with his son being born three weeks early, but it was still awful. This is the first time it’s all hit at once, though. He’s missing five months' worth of special days.

“I’m sorry, Krissy. I would do anything to be here.”

“I know! It’s just…” Sniffling as she trails off, Logan kisses her, needing to feel close for a moment. “The kids are old enough to realize you’re not gonna be here for all these big events, and our parents are trading visits, but it’s not the same. And I’m not trying to make you feel guilty or anything; it just sucks. And the damn pregnancy hormones are making everything so much worse!”

Logan feels terrible. There are no words that could make this better. Nothing to be done. He’s missing holidays, missing milestones, he’ll leave and when he comes back the kids will have doubled in size. This swing, he’ll be missing most of the pregnancy, unable to support Kris, to watch her change and glow as she grows their third child. He might even miss another birth, which devastates him.

“I’m so fucking sorry, Kristina. I wish I could change things.”

“I know.” She whispers as she tucks herself against his neck.

Arms wrapped around each other, Yale leans them against the dining room table, thinking about how this sucks. There are no other words to describe it. It just sucks. The feeling of her bump - which is just starting to show - pressing into his side and her wet eyelashes brushing against his throat makes everything clear for him. He knows what he has to do.

“It’s time to talk about what we’re going to do when I don’t re-up after this contract ends.”

“No!” His wife breaks away from him, shoving his chest as she goes. “Absolutely not!”

“I don’t want to miss any more time with you and the kids!”

“Logan Yang-Lee, you are not giving up on your dream just because I got a little bit sad that you’re leaving for half a year!”

“Kristina Yang-Lee, you are my dream. The kids are my dream. You think I waited and fought for almost two decades for you because I had a crush?”

“Logan…”

“And think about how much more money I could make if I was actually using my engineering degree!”

“Things are fine now; we don’t need more money.”

“Of course, we don’t need more money. But wouldn’t it be nice? We could put more away in the college funds and pay off the rest of your student loans. We could buy a house. One of our own, not whatever mediocre temporary housing Uncle Sam puts us in.”

“You’re great at what you do. And you love it. You can’t just leave!”

“I love you, Krissy.” He emphasizes the words as much as he can, trying to make sure she really understands and absorbs what he’s telling her. “I would miss the Navy and I would miss flying, but I would be fine. I would live. I cannot  - will not - live without you.”

“There’s still almost two years on your contract; let’s talk about this more when it gets closer. You might change your mind.”

“Nope! No discussion necessary. Start thinking about where we should move because I want to be with my family.”

“You say that now, but you never know what will happen.” She says, a big smirk on her face.

“What’s going to happen?” He scoffs, pulling her between his legs and kissing her before dipping his head down to kiss her growing belly. “It’s not like I’m going to get assigned to a highly specialized group of pilots that goes out and regularly saves the world!”

“You never know!”

“What is this? The Avengers? Do you think we’re living in an action movie?”

“It could happen! It could!” Kris smacks his shoulder when he hums doubtfully before turning towards the wreckage that is their house. “Wow. I really had a moment, didn’t I?

“You did; don’t worry, I’ll clean it up. But first, let’s finish decorating the tree.”

“It’s October 13th.”

“Yup. And you got the tree out. So, c’mon, crazy lady - let’s decorate.” Logan swats her ass as he passes, laughing when she squeaks and blushes. It’s nice that they can still fluster each other after all these years. “Okay, boys! We’re going to help Mommy clean a little bit, and then we’re going to decorate the tree! How does that sound?”

The soft look on Kristina’s face as their sons jump all over him makes his heart race.

Two years till I get this every day. Fictional highly specialized squadron be damned.

@gretagerwigsmuse | @hangmanapologist | @hangmanbrainrot | @princessphilly | @hangmanssunnies | @thesewordsareallihavetogive | @a-court-of-roscoe-and-baby | @katieshook02 | @hellojameshowyadoin | @aristotles-butthole | @atarmychick007 | @whatislovevavy | @kmc1989 | @sometimesanalice | @laracrofted | @yuckosworld | @mika-darling | @bradshawsbaddie | @bobblebobsbae | @ohtobeleah | @withahappyrefrain

[doggiewoggiez]

what is the reading list you’ve been doing

This meme. Got reposted from 4chan to Reddit to Twitter and finally to Tumblr. I'll update this post as I read each book. Here's the complete list:

1. Goosebumps #28: The Cuckoo Clock of Doom - R.L. Stine. Very middle of the road Goosebumps book not especially good but not terrible. 6/10 dead sisters.

2. Call of the Crocodile - F. Gardner. This book is a meme on /lit/ cause the dude's batshit and is constantly trying to promote his books that are extremely poorly written. He calls himself a famous author, doesn't believe gorillas or giraffes are real, and advocates chainsmoking cigarettes to help with the writing process. This book is the funniest thing I've ever read and made me so fucking angry by being so awful. 10/10 misplaced commas.

3. No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai. A semi-autobiographical story published before the author's suicide about a severely mentally ill character named Oba Yozo through his life of addiction, women, suicide attempts, and so on. An incredibly depressing read. His whole inner life is laid bare and it's disgusting and grotesque and you see yourself in him and you wish you could hold him and cry for him but even if you could you would never have the power to make anything okay. Beautiful fucking book, genuinely 100% no fucking joke changed my life. 10000/10 shitty cyberpunk adaptations.

4. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky. I cried hard as fuck dude. Another life changer for reals. Dostoevsky had such a deep understanding of human nature whether it be the lowest, most base and vile instincts or the unending capacity for love and compassion that exist in us all. All while being the blueprint for like every heady crime drama like Death Note, Breaking Bad, etc. The shit all you fags like. Most people just remember it as maybe required HS reading and definitely something people are pretentious about but it 100% deserves all the love it gets. Fan fucking tastic. 100000/10 years in Siberia.

5. Becoming - Michelle Obama. A bit too heavily ghostwritten, but when Michelle's voice shows through it's not terrible, it's kind of interesting to hear the inside scoop on White House life. It's kind of sad that Barack is the most interesting part of the book, and book-Barack seems like an extremely interesting and cool guy. But the book doesn't address all his dead civilians. 5/10 drone strikes.

6. Ulysses - James Joyce. The modernist novel, from what I understand. Half retelling of the Odyssey in 1900s Ireland, half a troll on literary critics, all around a pretty damn fun read. Not very far yet. Definitely the most difficult thing I've ever tried to read. Unfinished/10 Agenbites of inwit

7. 48 Laws of Power. This is like, THE sigma bro self help book as far as I've heard. It's pretty iconic, but I'm not especially excited for it.

8. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley. We all know it and love it, I'm interested to read the OG story.

9. Catechism of the Catholic Church 2nd Edition. Book from the Vatican that lays out what the church's official opinions, rules, shit like that are. Will be boring but interesting.

10. The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins. One of the biggest atheist dude books there is and probably by far the most influential. God is bad people who believe in God are stupid etc etc. Hopefully it has something interesting to say and isn't just a jerk off. It might just be a jerk off.

11. The Love Hypothesis - Ali Hazelwood. Some booktok romance schlock afaik. People make fun of it.

12. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole. All I know is it's about a guy in New Orleans in the 60s. Might be good, people seem to really like it.

13. The Art of War - Sun Tzu. Im gonna get so good at surprising my enemy.

14. Kodomo no Jikan - Kaworu Watashiya. Pure pedoslop, I don't think there's even an official English translation so we might not read it but I'm preemptively giving it 0/10.

15. The Iliad - Homer. The story of the Trojan war. All I know is Helen, Horse, and that's about it.

16. The Odyssey - Homer. It's the Odyssey. I think it's funny that it comes after Ulysses since I don't actually know the whole story of the Odyssey itself.

17. Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer - Stephen G. Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth. This is that thing they made a Netflix doc about a while back.

18. The C++ Programming Language 4th edition - Bjarne Stroustrup. Exactly what it says on the tin, by the guy who wrote the language.

19. Empress Theresa - Norman Boutin. A classic, it's a weird self-published story by a guy who's extremely unwell, usually referenced in the same way Sonichu is.

20. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner. His most difficult to read work, about a Southern family at the beginning of the 20th century.

21. Black Future #1 - Whitney Ryan. A very racist BNWO sissification porn story that was probably written as a joke. Possible skip definite 0/10.

22. The Cat in the Hat - Dr. Seuss. You know this.

23. The Trial - Franz Kafka. One of Kafka's most famous unfinished works, about a guy who's on trial for something and he doesn't know what.

24. American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis. Supposed to be way darker and more fucked up than the movie, really supposed to chill you to the bone afaik. VERY excited for this read.

25. Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon. One of those famous "Really Fucking Long And Hard Books" like Infinite Jest or Ulysses, incredibly autistic foray into WW2 rocket science. Classic Pynchonery.

26. Magick In Theory and Practice - Aleister Crowley. Thankfully it's not the entirety of Magick Liber ABA Book 4.

27. Minecraft Jokes for Kids - Steve Minecraft. Not a real book but we'll substitute Jokes For Minecrafters by the Hollow family.

28. The Jews and Their Lies - Martin Luther. One of the most notorious antisemitic texts, right up there with the Protocols. It's going to be a pretty apalling read but it has pretty damn significant historical value so it's probably worth reading.

29. Dianetics - L. Ron Hubbard. The scientology book. It's way longer than you'd expect.

30. Everyone Poops - Taro Gomi. I don't understand this because girls don't poop.

31. In His Own Write - John Lennon. His writing and art, mostly just a bunch of absurd bullshit. I want to remain neutral and not just hate the book because I hate the guy. We'll see if it deserves that.

32. Bear - Marian Engel. This is that Canadian novel where the woman has a romance with a bear.

33. How To Get A Girlfriend - Chad Scott Nellis. Some bullshit self published thing. I'm gonna be swimming in punani.

34. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck - Mark Manson. Some self help schlock afaik.

35. Gabriel Dropout (vol. 3) - UKAMI. This is that cutesy manga about those angels and demons in human high school.

36. 120 Days of Sodom - Marquis De Sade. Old story of elite sex cults, I'm pretty sure it's the origin of that being like a thing that people conspiracy theory about.

37. Phenomenology of Spirit - Hegel. You probably know Hegel from either Marx or Fallout New Vegas. I know Hegel because a chick at my friend's co-op talked at me about him for like ten minutes while I was way too shit faced to know what the fuck is going on around me at all but I nodded along.

38. Star Wars: The Ultimate Sticker Collection. I bought this used for a buck fifty with half the stickers gone. All the new trilogy ones were still there.

39. The Anarchist Cookbook. Vom hard at the idea of "buying" this but I want to make sure I get the version as it appears in the meme so I guess I'll drop a few bucks on it.

40. An American Life - Ronald Reagan. Practical applications for previous book.

41. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger. Had to read this in high school, hated it, maybe it'll be better this time around.

42. Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce. An early postmodernist work about uhhh fucking whatever it was about. I'm not gonna lie if Ulysses is this hard for me this one will kill me.

43. The Charles Mingus CAT-alog for Toilet Training Your Cat. I'm not in the know when it comes to music but apparently this guy is like one of the gods of jazz. And he wrote a book on teaching your cat to shit in a people-toilet.

44. Am I Disabled? - The Simpsons S7E7. This is the book Homer reads where he learns obesity is a disability and gets really fat so he can work from home. Story of my life.

45. Serial Experiments Lain: An Omnipresence in Wired - Yoshitoshi ABe. The Lain artbook, with the short manga The Nightmare of Fabrication. Will be very expensive to get ahold of.

46. Pounded by the Pound - Chuck Tingle. We've heard enough about this guy the bit was holding onto the last molecule of funny it had like five years ago but I now had to buy a compilation paperback of his work for this.

47. Ford Capri II 2.8 & 3.0 Owners Workshop Manual 1974-1987. Had to order this from the UK couldn't find any in the US.

48. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov. We all know what this is. Of all things when my mom saw this list this was the book she pointed out as being really good, which I thought was funny.

49. Man's Life Magazine, September 1956 issue. "Weasels Ripped My Flesh." Good god it will be difficult finding the actual magazine, but the weasels story itself has been reprinted.

50. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (2nd Edition) - Harold Abelson et al. I like when people make anime girls have it :)

51. Shiver - Junji Ito. Never been a major Ito fan but a couple of his works I really liked are in this compilation.

52. Neon Genesis Evangelion (vol. 2) - Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. The Eva manga was really good I've actually read it before.

53. How To Avoid Huge Ships - Captain John W. Trimmer. Classic meme because I guess the cover and premise is very funny but I don't really get the joke. It's not that ridiculous sounding of a book, it's just niche.

54. Spice and Wolf (vol. 1) - Isuna Hasekura. Light novel for that manga we've been seeing around. They put a generic cover on it and replaced the anime girl so it could sell to non-weebs.

55. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand. My sister read this in like middle school and unironically no joke started bawling crying sobbing because poor people are so evil and awful.

56. The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle. Oh Boy I Sure Hope This Little Wiggly Guy Eats Something Normal! Oh no.. oh dear ...

57. Glow In The Dark - Kanye West. Very very hard to get a physical copy but we'll try. Photo book of his tour of the same name.

58. Mein Kampf - Adolf Hitler. Now obviously this wasn't included on the list for the genuine important historical value this book has but that's what I'm going to be reading it for. In reading it critically afaik it really paints a picture of how pathetic and unwell he was.

59. Higurashi: When They Cry. I hear it's really good.

60. This is a naked photo of Daniel Radcliffe posed with a horse.

61. Aberration in the Heartland of the Real - Wendy S. Painting. This is a book on the life of the OKBOMB guy, Timothy McVeigh. I hate how true crime shit has become so polarized as either sensational dogshit to make women walk with their keys between their knuckles or some awful horrible thing that's not worth looking into because "they were just racist/misogynistic/etc" I think it's all very reductive so this promises to be a good read.

62. KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation. CIA document on breaking a prisoner and interrogating from the 60s.

63. The Game - Neil Strauss. The Bible for pickup artists.

64. Identifying Wood - R. Bruce Hoadley. Yep, it's wood.

65. Fresh And Fabulous Meals in Minutes - Ainsley Harriot. Lots of memes about him but this is just a regular cookbook.

66. The Turner Diaries - Andrew Macdonald. Far-right racist book that inspired terrorism and hate crimes. People who read it and didn't already agree with it going in have said it's poorly written and just blows, and in the peek I took that seems to be true. It's too influential to not read if I'm going to be reading about Timothy McVeigh. Hard to get since it got pulled from most online stores following Jan 6th.

67. The C Programming Language (2nd Edition) - Brian W. Kernighan & Dennis M. Ritchie. Gonna learn to code I guess.

68. A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara. It's a story about a group of mentally ill gay men living in New York. Has been described as trauma porn written by a woman fetishizing gay men and is on there because channers like making fun of it, but it was also shortlisted for a Pulitzer.

69. The Rose of Paracelsus - William Leonard Pickard. The author was the victim of one of the largest acid busts and he wrote this in prison.

70. The Book of Mormon - Joseph Smith. Interested to learn what the fuck Mormons are actually all about.

71. Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone - J.K. Rowling. Like most people I read these in middle school. They were mid then and they're ass now but I'm not gonna tryhard about how bad they are because you've probably heard enough at this point.

72. A Critique of Pure Reason - Immanuel Kant. As someone who doesn't know shit about philosophy I'm excited.

73. Autobiography - Morrissey. Notorious for being published through Penguin Classics which is NOT for Morrisseys. Bad Morrissey. Go to your room.

74. Official Final Fantasy 7 Strategy Guide. I'm gonna get so good at FF7 dude.

75. My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness - Kabi Nagata. Think of the most annoying bpd she/they you know and then imagine a really mid book that she'd become way too annoying about. You've imagined this book.

76. Children of the Matrix - David Icke. The origin of the reptoids conspiracy theory.

77. Anti-Oedipus - Deleuze and Guattari. Mario and Luigi for your leftist roommate who won't do the dishes

78. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace. It's a book about a person place or thing I know that much.

79. Sonichu #0 - Gonna be near impossible to source a physical copy from its short Lulu run.

80. Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe. Obviously of great historical importance but I get a sneaking suspicion that's not why they put it on the list.

81. Bronze Age Mindset - Bronze Age Pervert. This is... Well, it's sure something.

82. Drilled By My Two Cowboys - Aurora Sommers. BBW Cowboy porn 😋💦

83. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky. People say it's his best work and if it's anywhere near as good as C&P was it'll blow me away. Also the Godfather was inspired by it.

84. Spare - Prince Harry. Really unfunny inclusion I can't imagine there's much value in it.

85. Da Jesus Book. That's the Hawaiian Pidgin translation of the New Testament. So basically I'm just reading the bible with extra steps.

86. Elon Musk - Ashlee Vance. Biography on Elon Musk apparently, not especially interested cause good chance it'll just suck him off hard.

87. Where's Waldo (Deluxe) - Martin Handford. Oh god I hope I find him.

88. Dracula - Bram Stoker. Shoulda subbed to Dracula Daily......

89. Bart Simpson's Guide to Life. I'm excited to see what Bart has to say about what I need to do with myself.

90. Bakemonogatari (vol. 1) - Nisio Isin. I've heard of this in passing I don't really know anything about this light novel except there's like girls and they're monsters maybe?

91. Business Secrets of the Pharoahs - Mark Crorigan. Fake book from S8E2 of the show Peep Show, which I've never heard of. It's British.

92. Industrial Society and Its Future - Ted Kaczynski. All I really know about Ted's ideas in the end is that everyone on here says he's based. I definitely want to read him and formulate my own opinion but I will probably also end up agreeing that he's based.

93. My Twisted World - Elliot Rodger. This is the manifesto of that incel shooter, probably a pretty worthwhile read in the same way a lot of this stuff is, a look into a deeply troubled person's mind.

94. Wash Your Penis - Jordan B. Peterson. This doesn't exist so we'll just read 12 Rules for Life.

95. Andrew Tate's Exegesis of the Quran. Unfortunately he did not actually write one though I bet it would be soooo terrible and funny. But we will read the Quran.

96. Art of the Deal - Donald Trump. Time to find out why people respected this guy.

[catflowerqueen]

Hm… Actually, more angst potential in a Danny Phantom/Assassination crossover might be if some of the Reaper’s victims came back as ghosts. 

Like… I feel like most of their obsessions would be the “unfinished business” type rather than straight-up revenge, and it is probably doubtful that any of them would actually recognize that Korosensei was the one who killed them… but it is possible that Korosensei might recognize some of them. Or Irina or Karasuma would and then make a comment about hearing that the Reaper did it.

 Since Danny would feel obligated to stop them from messing with the human realm, Korosensei would probably feel some sort of guilt/responsibility to do something just so the weight can be taken off of Danny’s shoulders for a bit--but he likely wouldn’t actually explain that the reason he’s feeling like this is because he used to be the Reaper (since he didn’t immediately talk about it after the Reaper 2.0 arc even though it was a pretty big contributing factor for why that guy was Like That). Probably you would just get an episode where he tries to get the class to become ghost hunters for a bit--maybe this would even lead to the arc where Danny’s secret gets revealed in the first place.

I could see something happening where, before he knows Phantom is Danny, he tries to become the ghost kid’s teacher and show him techniques, except it turns out that assassination skills don’t always translate that well in fighting ghosts considering all the supernatural powers they have. So Danny would get annoyed by his antics the same way he did at Jazz when she was just starting out directly helping him, and then you might get a situation where Korosensei is absolutely convinced that the reason Phantom is so annoyed is that he, too, was one of the Reaper’s victims. Does Korosensei actually remember killing him? No, but that isn’t surprising since he’s killed a lot of people, and it’s not like the ghosts look exactly the same way they did when they were alive, so...

In any case, he would be extremely relived to find out that Danny’s half-death had nothing to do with him. Then he would just have to deal with the guilt that his actions as the Reaper are still affecting Danny anyways, despite him not actually having anything to do with them, as well as the restrained fury about the neglect of the Fenton parents mentioned in previous posts. And, like--telling Danny to just stop and let someone else deal with the situation probably won’t work the way he wants it to considering the protection obsession. Not unless someone actively takes over and Danny can see they’re actually being effective.

(And I can see that leading to the aforementioned “Let’s teach the class how to hunt ghosts” episode. Like--the A plot is the majority of the class, attempting to learn how to fight ghosts, while the B plot is trying to get Danny to just relax for a day. And Korosensei would probably be bouncing in between the two groups. At one point they might all remember the Fentons exist as professional ghost hunters and go to them for tips and gear--and then find out that not only do they not know their son is a half-ghost, but also that they despise his ghostly half and would gladly vivisect Phantom if given the chance.

And, actually, I can see Korosensei doing this before the reveal. Like. When he decides he wants to help Phantom, not realizing he is Danny, he goes to the Fenton household in disguise to get some gear and notices how uncomfortable Danny seems by the whole conversation--a discomfort that goes beyond the fact that his teacher, who is very dangerous and has claimed to want to destroy the world come March is here, in his house, talking to his family. Danny [or Jazz] would give him the real scoop about ghosts when asked about it later, how while his parents gear is very effective, they have no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to the ghosts themselves. And he would be very quick to remember this conversation after the reveal, including all the implications it has as far as Danny is concerned.

Might lead to a semi-humorous scene where he very, very half-heartedly tells his students that they can’t actually go after Danny’s parents. And how they definitely should not “do these actions which would totally be an effective plan to take them out,” or “these other actions if plan A--I mean, the thing you totally shouldn’t be doing--doesn’t work out,” because “It’s not easy covering up that sort of thing, especially if they come back as ghosts. Oh, and also it’s, like, illegal, or whatever.” Nagisa is taking notes and the others are “subtly” forming strike teams until Karasuma tells them no... even though he also is uncomfortable with Danny staying in that sort of environment. Because even if he doesn’t figure out the ghost thing, that’s not exactly the healthiest environment for Danny to be in anyways--especially because the lab accident bit is probably common knowledge even if the actual effects it had on Danny aren’t).

Also, the entire situation might also be another way to push Nagisa and the others from trying to make assassination their future career, though. Like—not necessarily because of worries that their victims would become ghosts, but more because they’re seeing the consequences and what it really means to assassinate someone. That their future targets will be actual people with their own hopes and dreams. Hopes and dreams which will be cut short if the assassination is successful.

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 150

I think for the time being, I am going to quit calling myself ‘late’ posting as long as I get the chapter up on the right day of the week *facepalm*.  Bc I am barely keeping ahead, much less remembering to queue things up.

I am so, so sorry about that....

Fair warning before anyone @s me: The French is a joke, so if I got it super wrong I am equally sorry to the degree of which it’s wrong.

Unless it’s obscene. Then I want to know so that I can laugh with you, and I am LEAVING IT.

As always, shouts out to @baelpenrose, @the-raven-fae, and @charlylimph-blog!

Heaving an enormous Dutch oven onto a burner, I turned on the heat low and started chopping vegetables. After the first celery stalk, I glanced up at Derek, who sat across from Maverick in our living room.  The quarters were shaped differently, which had distressed Derek initially, but the addition of his favorite blankets to the sofa had helped.  Currently, he was completely distracted from even Mac: staring off into space, his fingers flying and flicking with a feverish, almost convulsive movement.

Maverick glanced up at me with a smile before following my gaze. “Yep, the cyber siege continues.  He’s doing well, from what Zach told me.”

“I thought he was only supposed to attack human-managed systems,” I grumbled, thinking back to the cold shower I had been subjected to that morning. Turning back to the vegetables, I made short work of the celery before taking my frustration out on the carrots. Scooping the diced vegetables into a bowl, I started measuring out paprika, sugar, salt, pepper, basil, and oregano into another bowl.  “Where’s Sam, by the way?”

“On the way,” Maverick promised. “With Terran-style tomatoes, he swears.  And Derek is only attacking systems we manage.  When BioLab 2 was set up, we had to take over water management, to protect the lab from any sort of contamination.”

The knife in my hand, brandished at three cloves of garlic, clattered to the work surface. “Seriously?” I glared at the tap, suddenly suspicious.

“Probably get water from the console,” he winced, nodding briskly at Derek, who nodded in confirmation without stopping his tapping and flicking gestures.

Groaning, I shook my head and crushed the garlic, removed the skin, and started mincing. All that was left was to wait on the tomatoes from Sam.  The garlic was potent enough, and I wanted to avoid cutting any onion until absolutely necessary since Derek was clearly parked for the duration.

I was saved about fifteen minutes later when Conor and Sam stopped at the door.  Sam waved cheerfully and held up the requested vegetables while Conor removed his boots. A quick shuffle later for Sam to remove his own shoes, and both came to the food prep area - too small to be considered a proper kitchen - to greet me. 

First, Conor gave me a big, smelly hug and a kiss on my hair. “Did you already slice the bread?”

“Ew, you gorilla!” I laughed. “And I haven’t sliced any bread yet, I wasn’t sure how long I had and I didn’t want it to get too stale.”

“They’re toasties, love.” He shook his head with a grin before swatting me on the butt. “No one cares if the bread was a bit stale before you started.”

Over his shoulder, Derek’s head bobbed side to side. “I think someone disagrees.” I looked meaningfully past him.  To Conor’s credit, he looked sheepish.

Sam squeezed around and handed me the tomatoes and gave me a hug. “Thank you for making soup.”

“I know it’s our favorite,” I winked before shooing him out of the area. “Not enough room for more than one in the kitchen. Y’all go unwind out there, and make sure you warn Derek that I’m about to start cutting onions.”

As he held up his hands and jokingly scurried away, I turned to the stove and started cursing myself. I’d forgotten to start boiling water. Snagging a small saucepan, I got a carafe of water from the console and started rectifying that, tossing in a generous pinch of salt.  Gently, I cut an X into the bottom of each tomato and set them aside before peeling and dicing the onion.  Immediately, the onion, carrots, and celery went into a food processor.  “Derek, I’m about to be loud,” I called softly before counting to ten to give him time to cover his ears or step into the corridor.  A quick blitz later, the vegetables were perfectly between a mince and a puree.

A quick swizzle of oil went into the already-hot dutch oven before adding the mirepoix and giving it a quick stir. As if on cue, Tyche and Antoine breezed through the door, noses twitching.

“I smell food,” she announced, stalking into the kitchen.  One look at the ingredients was all it took. “Ooooo you’re making the tomato soup.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “I am, and you know I don’t have room in here for spectators, unfortunately.” Arching an eyebrow, I pointed the spoon in my hand at the table.

She wasn’t having it. “One of these days, you’re going to show me how to make that. May as well be today.”

“Nice try, but I need some secrets. Besides, the longer I argue with you, the more likely the vegetables are going to scorch. Scoot!”

She scrunched her face at me but acquiesced. As I scooped the garlic into the pot, I heard her change topics. “How much longer is the stress test? My music keeps getting mixed up with Antoine’s. I don’t mind it, but…”

Antoine smiled softly and shook his head. “But it is quite a shock to expect classical music and instead her rock starts playing.”

Personally, I liked both, but still shuddered at what he was talking about. Carefully lowering three of the tomatoes into the now-boiling water, I glanced at the sauteing vegetables and gave them a quick stir to check. “We have about six more days before the repairs start, maybe four more after that?”

Conor sighed. “I wish we could ask if anything important was being hacked, not just annoying environmental controls.”

“Plants aren’t dead yet,” Sam pointed out, tipping his bottle of water toward Conor in a practiced gesture.  Everyone laughed when, rather than being reassured, Conor leapt to his feet to check on his ‘babies’ in the room.

Cursing, I dipped the tomatoes out of the boiling water and dropped them immediately into an ice bath.  A couple pokes with my trusty spoon showed they weren’t overcooked, thankfully. “None of my information for work has been acting up,” I admitted as I started peeling them. “But Pranav advised that more critical data would either go completely missing or not show any signs of infiltration.  We won’t know until after the test is over.”

“Lovely,” Tyche drawled as she watched Conor fretting over the plants. “So it’s all or nothing.”

I shrugged and dumped the tomato paste - admittedly, from the console - into the pan of other vegetables.  When I stirred, I was satisfied that the carrots, onion, and celery had cooked down to where they were soft. “In a weird way, it makes sense. They’re testing for catastrophic data breaches, which would pull everything down, or for data theft, which you wouldn’t want to leave traces of.”

The corner of Antoine’s mouth quirked up as I dropped three more tomatoes into the pan of boiling water. “No hidden boba tea this time, that is reassuring.”

Hands still moving without hesitation, Derek whipped his head toward Antoine, paused, and turned back to where he had been staring. Derek’s version of a glare.

“That was Charly,” I responded in unexpected unison with Maverick and Conor.  I smirked while dumping the already-peeled tomatoes into the processor with another pinch of salt. “Seriously, Derek had nothing to do with that other than divine retribution.” I paused for a moment. “Although I do have to admit that the cold showers do seem to track with what Charly reported.”

That only got a shrug from Derek, which was as good as an admission.

The conversation shifted again - something Conor and Sam were working on in the aeroponics labs that I had already heard multiple details on, plus repetition.  Tuning it out, I pulled out the last three tomatoes, dropped them in the ice bath, and took a platter with a loaf of bread, sliced cheese, and butter out to the table. “Mav, can you start setting up the sandwiches?”

He went to stand, but Tyche shooed him back down. “I got it. She may not let me help make the soup on this one, but I can prep a grilled cheese with the best.” Staring me in the eye, she started cutting slices from the loaf defiantly.

I just laughed it off. This was the only tomato soup either of us liked, and she had been chasing me for the recipe for ages.  It had become a running joke at this point, so without hesitation, I moved back to the food prep area, peeled the remaining tomatoes, and gave another warning that I was going to be loud.  Some more blitzing later, the now-pureed tomatoes went into the pan of veggies along with the spices I had already measured out, the juice from one lemon, and enough water to fill the pan three-quarters full.  Leaving that to boil, I moved the boiling water off the stove and swapped it for a grill-pan.

“Sophie!” Conor cried from the armchair where he perched. “You’ve seen the plants we’re growing in the lab! Tell them we’ve managed a crop of roots!”

I winced. “Jury’s out… I’m not sure how aeroponic potatoes are going to turn out, but I can confirm they are in the process of finding out?”

Tyche’s knife fell to the table, and she moved her mouth silently in a very accurate imitation of a fish before managing to sputter. “Air-grown… potatoes?”

The confusion on Antoine’s face was painful to look at. He started to speak before stopping himself and instead pulling up his datapad, jotting a message, and flicking it out to the room.

When I read the message, the confusion was so clear that I hurt my sinuses snorting. Des pomme de terre en l’air? Pommes aeriennes? Talk about being lost in translation…. “Conor, Sam… I think Antoine has the perfect name for those if they work out. Just sayin’”

Tyche snorted and shook her head before handing me the platter, with a stack of perfectly buttered bread, two slices of cheese between every other slice of bread.  The soup had just come to a simmer, so I was stirring intently and just nodded for her to start grilling sandwiches.  Several appreciative sniffs and twenty minutes later, six bowls of soup and six matching sandwiches - three cut vertically and three cut diagonally, because it mattered and was not a battle I was willing to fight - hit the table.  Tyche politely placed the salt cellar and a pepper grinder on the table, although the glare she dished out to the collected group promised strong retaliation to anyone who touched them.

I held up half of my grilled cheese in a mock-toast. “To soup night!”

“To air potato soup, soon!” Maverick offered up with a grin, only for everyone to echo his sentiment with the exception of Derek - who just held up half of his sandwich with one hand and tapped away with the other, not even relenting to eat.

Frankly, as long as he spared a hand to eat, I couldn’t bring myself to care.  He took these tests very seriously, and generally only stopped when he was completely asleep.

Everyone dug in, but it was only after my first spoonful that I spoke up. “Considering how long it took to make sure the tomatoes wouldn’t be poisonous, I’m not sure the potatoes will be ready before we get to Von.”

Conor and Sam nodded, as did Tyche and Antoine, but Maverick stopped with his bowl halfway to his mouth.  Setting it down gently, he angled his head. “What do you mean, poisonous?”

“They’re nightshades,” Conor told him, as calmly as if he was telling us that water was wet. “Tomatoes are the only edible berries of that family, and potatoes are the only edible tubers, so we have to be extra careful.”

Maverick’s eyes grew wide and turned toward his soup. Tyche just reached out and patted his hand. “You’ve eaten this soup for years, and you love tomatoes. They’re safe, I swear.  And Sam won’t let Sophia near the new ones until he’s completely sure they’ll be okay to eat.”

Sam nodded, shoving a soup-covered wedge into his mouth. “We’re growing them in simulated Von-light, hoping that keeps the roots from creating chlorophyll.  If we’re wrong, there’s a forty-three-point-six percent chance they won’t grow at all, ten-point-five percent chance they will give you a stomach ache, eighteen-point-four percent they won’t taste good, and twenty-seven-point-five percent they will taste good and be safe to eat at the same time.”

“Meaning they won’t kill you, you might get a tummy ache, but most likely for this generation, they just won’t grow,” Conor translated.

“Hang on,” I held up my spoon. “What kind of stomachache are we talking here?”

The mad botanists looked at each other and made a few thoughtful faces. Finally, Conor nodded and Sam spoke. “Unripe apples,” he stated flatly. “But just unripe apples.”

“Oh, that’s not too bad,” I shrugged and crunched into my sandwich.

Derek finished his half-sandwich and blindly reached for another. He had it halfway to his mouth before he looked at it and dropped it back to the plate in alarm. You would have thought it tried to bite him rather than vice versa.

Antoine shook his head and reached past the vertically cut sandwich Derek had dropped and delicately handed him a diagonally cut one. “Here you go, friend.”

Glaring at the sandwich like it may betray him, he bit it viciously before going back to the screen he could only see in his mind, seemingly satisfied that the sandwich would not change into the offending shape.

I told you, it matters.

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[cheri-translates]

[CN] ASMR Transcript -  Thoughtful Care (Victor)

🍒 This post contains detailed content for an ASMR, 贴心照料, which is already available in EN! Just to make it clear - I haven’t listened to the EN version, so this is my personal translation based on the CN version 🍒

Summary: Victor catches a cold but it doesn’t stop him from using idioms :<

[ cute Victor grunts ]

What are you doing here?

I already said that I’m fine.

[ Victor coughs ]

It’s just a little cold.

There’s no need to make a fuss about nothing.

[ footsteps and rustling of bag ]

What’s this?

Who told you that indigo woad root can treat colds?

Too sweet.

I’m not drinking it.

[ rustling of bag ]

And what’s this?

Anti-cough medicine?

[ Victor coughs ]

Too bitter. 

I’m not eating it.

Keep away this mess of medicine. 

I’ll be fine after sleeping.

[ rustling sounds + timer starts ringing ]

The kitchen timer is ringing.

What did you cook?

[ MC runs into the kitchen ]

Truly, not a moment is trouble-free.

[ timer stops ringing + soft Victor breathing noises + many cute coughs + Victor tapping on his phone. When Victor hears MC’s footsteps returning, Victor locks his phone ]

You’re really capable.

You can cook congee now.

[ Victor coughs ]

If it weren’t for a certain someone forgetting to put salt into stir-friend vegetables,

Simply making congee wouldn’t make me look at you with new eyes.

What?

I don’t want to eat medicine.

Can’t I just have congee?

All right.

I’ll agree this once. 

I’ll eat the medicine after finishing the congee.

Careful, it’s hot.

[ scooping sounds ]

Mm. 

Unexpectedly, it isn’t terrible.

If you want to try it, scoop it from the pot yourself.

Don’t use the spoon I’ve used.

You’ll get infected.

Also,

It isn’t as delicious as what you imagine.

I can’t speak the truth once I’m sick?

[ elegant slurp sounds + contented “ahh” ]

Based on this rate of feeding,

This bowl of congee will only be finished when night falls.

I’ll do it myself.

[ less elegant slurp sounds + GULP GULP SOUNDS + contented Victor noises ]

I’ve had the congee.

And have eaten the medicine.

Now, you can rest assured.

Help me

Get a set of pyjamas from the closet.

The first drawer.

[ MC walks over to the closet ]

I’m damp with sweat from last night.

And want to change into a clean set.

[ rustling sounds ]

Mm, this one will do.

[ MC walks back ]

You...

What are you doing?

Don’t touch that.

This scar...

It doesn’t hurt.

It’s been fine since a long time ago.

Don’t worry about it.

[ Victor’s cute coughs return + rustling noises ]

Who let you to lie down?

Face away.

I don’t want to take care of a sick dummy again.

[ rustling noises ]

That’s all.

Don’t move anymore.

This is good enough.

If you want to sleep, sleep properly.

You rushed over even before the sky turned bright.

Aren’t you cold?

Give me your hand.

Your legs are cold too.

You can’t even take care of yourself,

Yet spend the whole day thinking about how to take care of me.

But

[ Victor laughs ]

Aside from you,

No one will think that I need to be taken cared of.

When I was sleeping earlier, I felt like you were here.

I even thought I was dreaming.

I was a little surprised.

It’s the first time that I’m experiencing such a...

Peace of mind.

Looks like humans are truly strange.

At times, it’s only when they want to belong to someone else

Do they feel at ease.

If you don’t understand this, 

Just take it that I’m complimenting you.

[ rustling noises ]

Why did you turn around?

If you catch a cold, I won’t be responsible for cooking congee for you.

[ Victor coughs ]

You’re hugging me so tightly.

Do you still want me to have a peaceful sleep?

Be more well-behaved.

Right now, I don’t have much strength to deal with you.

If there’s anything,

Tell me after I’ve woken up.

[ patting sounds ]

–

More ASMR transcripts: here

[itwoodbeprefect]

decided to just compile a bunch of comments about my sga 1x01 rising rewatch into a single post because i don’t actually want to make a hundred posts in a row, so here, under the cut, many rambles:

announcer guy does, in fact, speak english upon a second attempt. well done on not forgetting to not speak german, announcer guy.

“i’m afraid of the thing” elizabeth says, about the drone chair, while standing next to it and looking like she wants to fuck it

rodney in that orange sweater! very orange! very warm!

john is on screen. john’s first words are helicopters he knows how to fly. john KINDA LIKES IT in antarctica. john has barely done anything and i already feel like crying a little bit about this guy who LIKES ANTARCTICA because he just wants to fly

POOR CARSON when he almost kills two people. “ai told ya ai was the wrong pursohn” :(

i really love how john sees the drone coming at the (landed) helicopter and yells “get out!” and they throw open their doors and john JUMPS and then it’s just “ugh.” and he’s belly-down on the floor and still like, almost under the helicopter. an attempt was made, for sure. just not a very succesful one.

the way john looks around like he’s never seen a ceiling before when he enters the base is just. very funny. and then some guy in particular is looking at him because he’s a bit of a weirdo and john looks back and the guy sort of looks him up and down and john looks away as if to check if anybody saw that. hmm.

john’s face of “oops” after he sits down in the chair and it ACTIVATES and carson RUNS OFF to go get literally everyone and john is realizing he MAY have just made a very giant big mistake. PRICELESS

teyla: my people have long believed the wraith will come if we venture into the ancient city. sumner, when the wraith come after he ventures into the ancient city: [surprised pikachu face]

gotta love how john insisting on saving his people is what wakes up the wraith, and saving his people is also what landed john in antarctica in the first place because he tried it in afghanistan once before. which wouldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been an american war in afghanistan in the first place, which there wouldn’t have been if bush hadn’t thrown the us into it, which wouldn’t have happened without 9/11, so... bin laden woke the wraith?

on the other hand john would never have had to go on a rescue mission on his first day in pegasus if sumner hadn’t gone into that city against the wishes of the people that already lived there and had a history dating back thousands of years with the place, so more realistically, the expeditions’ colonizer mentality woke the wraith. and then they just kinda... kept going with that for the rest of the show, because it worked out so well on that first day.

anyway i’m not even there yet - puddlejumper! it jumps puddles!

have to love the moment john realizes the puddlejumper is pretty literally reading his mind and giving him anything he can think of that is within its power (so no turkey sandwiches, but that’s okay). john is already in love with it just based on the fact that IT CAN FLY AND GO FAST (“i kinda like it here”, restored) but then all the ancient technology just seems to know him and love him back and gives him way more than he even thinks to ask for. which, for john, who doesn’t really do well expressing desires? a FLYING SHIP that then READS HIS MIND? starstruck. love at first sight. john&puddlejumper, instant bffs. i bet it would have popped a compartment with some stray bits of wire if he’d asked for a friendship bracelet right then and there. ford sitting there witnessing this doesn’t even know how hard he’s thirdwheeling it in that moment.

now i am at the bit where sumner is taken from the wraith prison to see the actual wraith, and look, obviously they’re evil and feed on humans etc etc, but this particular wraith’s sense of dramatics? unparalleled. she has them bring her victims one by one to a large foggy room with a looong table set with a wonderful dinner and then she LEAVES a DEAD BODY sitting at the head of the table (implied to be the athosian that was taken before sumner?) and drops down from the ceiling while sumner has his back turned for no reason except the spectacle of it all, and dracula himself literally couldn’t have made a better display out of this. it’s maybe scary in the way that it makes clear she’s a cat toying with a helpless mouse before she eats it, but it’s also hilarious in the way that this is absolutely a very bored immortal being who had to stay up while the rest went to sleep and is inventing high school improv plays with her dinner for some diversion. don’t play with your food, wraith queen. you’re scaring your dinner.

life signs detector!!! ford didn’t get to name the puddlejumpers gateships, but that one stuck, no matter how much “we can name it later” john was trying to throw at it!!!

(god. there’s a ficlet somewhere in there about season 2 john having a moment where he realizes he’s on the hunt for ford using the thing they first discovered together and that ford gave its name.)

getting sidetracked here, but when john and ford find the group of humans caught by the wraith teyla goes “major!” and it makes me think that. well. how are the athosians supposed to know things like “major” and “colonel” are military ranks? what are the chances the pegasus galaxy uses the same designations? (don’t really know how the language thing works here - we’re hopefully not supposed to think they’re all speaking english, are they? i’ve never watched sg1, there’s probably lore about this, i assume. maybe alien titles somehow get perfect translations to earth ones and vice versa.) but i mean, teyla is too smart, she’d have it figured out already even if those words don’t exist in her galaxy, but some athosian somewhere is going to be very confused by this earth tendency to name way too many kids private and lieutenant, and then put all of them into the army. strange, to have your job decided for you at birth like that. earth people are weeeeird.

fjdkl john is like bye, gonna go find colonel sumner all on my own, run if you don’t hear from me in twenty minutes, and ford’s like “you’re the only one who can fly these people out of here” and “i’m saying i should be the one to go, sir” and john, with his savior can’t-leave-anyone-behind-gotta-do-this-personally-or-i-will-literally-die-from-not-almost-dying complex DOES NOT LISTEN to ford’s EXTREMELY ACCURATE objection. which is his right, as ranking officer, but is also a perfect showcase of why john Should Not Ever be in charge of atlantis, and why sam saying he was totally on the shortlist when she takes over command in s4 is funny but frightening if you’re on atlantis and like being alive.

sumner: “we travel through the stargate as peaceful explorers.” FDJKFD. god, that line, from that character, hilarious.

rodney comes to elizabeth full of enthusiasm about all the interesting stuff they’re finding in the city only to find her staring at the empty gate and when she says she should never have let them (the rescue party) go, he sobers up and says awkwardly “for what it’s worth, you made the right decision” and that’s GOOD that’s KIND.

back on the planet with the wraith everyone is running to the jumper while there are wraith darts whizzing through the air and teyla turns back, catches up with ford who was told to cover their six, disarms him (because he was firing at illusions, revealing their position), hands him back his weapon, pulls him in the direction of the puddlejumper, and PUSHES HIM ASIDE when they’re almost scooped up by a wraith dart, and i’m so here for teyla being allowed a moment of heroics that saves specifically ford, guy with a gun, and not a random athosian damsel in distress. teyla is fully on their level. teyla is perhaps above their level. thank you.

that scene at the end of this episode!! in which there’s a sort of party on atlantis and it’s all buzzing and relaxed while the athosians are mingling freely with the expedition members and they’re talking of friendship and ugh. UGH. there’s a better version of sga in an alternate universe where the expedition didn’t decide atlantis was totally theirs, actually, and they cooperate with the people that were already in the galaxy when they came there and learn from sumner’s mistake to actually respect what they have to say and form a single front and teyla takes over as head of the expedition in s4 when there’s a void left by elizabeth’s absence.

final thought that has always haunted me a little: john suddenly becoming the ranking military member on atlantis after sumner’s death is ?? one of those things where i wonder what the sgc was thinking in their personnel assignments. john wasn’t even supposed to BE THERE. if john hadn’t gone and sumner had still died (which was something they should have considered as a possiblitiy! they didn’t know what they were walking into at all! sumner is apparently the type to lead his own missions!), then what exactly would they have done? i don’t know much about how the us military operates but i’ve watched enough mash to have figured out the order of the ranks and it just seems. very odd to me? to take one (1) colonel on this mission and then ZERO lieutenant colonels OR majors (if john hadn’t stumbled his way into it, that is). like, are there any captains on atlantis? (i think there are?) or would ford, a lieutenant, have ended up ranking military member? this is like the surely-they-only-need-a-single-medical-doctor-right thing. WHAT IS THE SGC THINKING.

anyway. this was good. i liked this. i hadn’t rewatched the pilot in a while, and i only just now figured out how much of a while, because there was a bunch in here i didn’t remember. ON TO EPISODE TWO.

[glarnboudin]

Tiratola, the Long-Tailed Terror!

Aliases: the Dragon of Etna, the Serpentine Savior, Our Lady of Flame

Date Discovered: May 20th, 1954

Place of Origin: Mt. Etna

Notable Stomping Grounds: Mt. Etna, Messina, Pisa, Stromboli Kaiju Reserve

Height: Generally holds head around 15 meters above the ground, but can rear up to tower at around 34 meters at her tallest.

Length: 115 meters

Biology:

A prehistoric varanid of enormous size from the same lineage that produced Kraydi, Tiratola brings to mind the dragons of yore, slinking and serpentine and adorned with a crown of fearsome crests and horns. Indeed, her Mediterranean location closely matches with depictions of dragons from the ancient Greeks and Romans, although her demeanor is hardly that of a rapacious devourer of maidens and hoarder of gold.

Rather than her jaws, Tiratola’s primary weapon of choice is her tail - even for a reptile, hers is incredibly long and dexterous, making up more than half of her total body length and as flexible and powerful as the body of any snake. With it, she can lash at targets several hundred feet away, coil and constrict her opponents, and even pick up and hurl objects as big as buildings or handle very small objects with the very tip of the tail like an elephant’s trunk. Indeed, her style of combat is very similar to that of the American kaiju Gorgolisk, preferring to coil and constrict her opponents with her powerful body.

As a kaiju, Tiratola also sports a fairly standard powerset:

Super strength

An enhanced healing factor

Immunity to radiation

She also has one more trick up her sleeve - like many other prehistoric varanids as well as Tyrantis himself, the Terror of Italia sports venom glands within her jaws that she can either ‘chew’ into her opponents or spray like a spitting cobra, and like Tyrantis, this venom has further honed into a flammable compound like something out of the pages of myth and legend.

Of course, comparing Tiratola’s fire spitting with Tyrantis’ flaming breath would be akin to comparing a firecracker with a flamethrower - rather than napalm-like torrents of ignited venom, the enormous reptile’s sprayed venom ignites into a cloud of scalding sparks and embers that explodes outwards in a shotgun-like blast with a loud crack and a blinding flash. While it’s not the best at actually damaging opponents, it still stings and burns quite painfully for targets, especially if hit in the eyes and other sensitive areas, and the sharp rapport of the venom combusting can cause a few seconds of disorientation. Injecting the stuff into the bodies of opponents, however, produces rather more grisly results as it reacts with oxygen in the bloodstream, causing the wounds inflicted by her teeth to burst open a few seconds after she lets go. To a kaiju’s durability and regeneration, it’s not nearly as harmful as it looks unless Tiratola injects a truly immense amount of venom or her opponent is considerably smaller than herself, but it’s still quite painful to experience.

History & Personality:

When the Superquake of ‘54 rocked the world, the actual tremors weren’t the only force behind the resulting destruction - tidal waves lashed the coasts, avalanches and rockslides buried towns, and a number of already-rumbling volcanoes were roused to erupt once more, pushing up not only molten material but all manner of strange new landforms forged from the Yamaneon tunnels beneath the earth. Home to several volcanoes as they are, Greece and Italy were particularly subject to this, disgorging an assortment of subterranean environments alongside quite a number of kaiju. Among them was the great reptile Tiratola - emerging from the volcanic aftermath of Mt. Etna, the serpentine saurian made herself known to the public at large when she swept through the outskirts of Messina and smothered a major fire when she settled herself on top of it for warmth, inadvertently saving much of the city from burning to the ground. In the aftermath of the fire, she would go on to save even more lives as she nosed around the rubble, unearthing nearly two dozen people that had been trapped beneath fallen debris.

Since her awakening, Tiratola has come to roam across Italy and Greece, frequently digging people out of rubble wherever she went and frequently engaging smaller mutants emerging from local Yamaneon tunnels as well as the occasional full-on kaiju - her most famous scuffles include preying upon a hoard of Paleozoic invertebrates that emerged from a Carboniferous swamp in the Greek Kassandra Peninsula and engaging a hulking one-eyed hominid kaiju that had been menacing the city of Taranto, dragging it down to its doom beneath the waves before it could do anything worse than superficial damage to buildings. Aside from an incident involving the Leaning Tower of Pisa, she’s been responsible for relatively little destruction, and has become somewhat of a local hero to the populace of the regions, something that Tiratola has come to notice.

Low to the ground as she is, the Whip-Tailed Terror is by her nature literally closer to human beings than many other kaiju, and is more aware of their activities as a result. She’s come to recognize how people react to her presence and realizes how easily she can reshape the tiny world that she now finds herself in. Were she a more malevolent sort, this awareness and her ability to easily wind through city streets could potentially make her an incredibly dangerous thrat to human beings, but the ultimate result of this is that Tiratola has come to realize that she quite enjoys the attention and praise she gets from acts of heroism. Being a reptile, she is by nature a very energy-efficient creature, conserving her strength when she does need to exert herself… but being a kaiju, acts of aid towards humans are trivially easy for her. A couple sweeps of her tail can smother a major fire beneath dirt and water and pulling people from danger can be easily accomplished by simply pushing her head into, say, a burning building and using her keen senses to locate survivors in the same way that modern varanids break into termite mounds and locate warm chambers to lay their eggs in or mother crocodiles dig out their young from nests. It costs little to the great reptile to lend her aid to others, and the reward for doing so is more than worth it - adoration and cheers whenever she enters a populated area, occasional offerings of fish and other treats, even occasional cleanings by teams of volunteers that scrub her down and aid in peeling off any lingering bits of unshed skin. The latter task has also provided another boon to the people of Greece and Italy - analysis of Tiratola’s shed skin has shed a lot of light on kaiju cellular biology, and the scales themselves are durable enough to be shaped and worked like metal or glass, fostering a small but lucrative industry of decorative items made from the kaiju’s scales.

However, there may also be another reason for her gentleness towards humans - while unearthing survivors from rubble, Tiratola frequently makes vocalizations not unlike those of crocodilian and alligator parents when unearthing their buried young, even scooping them up in her jaws in a similar fashion to carry them to safety. It may be that trapped survivors reminds the the whip-tailed dragon of her own offspring, buried in sand and soil - joint Reptodite-human expeditions into the collapsed tunnels where the kaiju emerged have even found the crystallized remains of ruined nests and cracked eggs, suggesting that she may have produced several clutches of offspring before via parthenogenesis in the same manner as some species of monitor lizard, although none seem to have survived. 

Behind the Scenes:

Behold, my entry to @tyrantisterror ’s ATOM Create a Kaiju Contest 3D, Tiratola! I’ve entered both of his previous contests, and I didn’t want to miss out here, although this is admittedly my first time posting one here to Tumblr; there’s a bunch of really creative kaiju already entered into the competition, and I highly recommend checking them out. My entry really isn’t the best by far (I wanted to make Tiratola a lot lengthier and more serpentine, but I didn’t have the space to do it, and I can’t really do detail work for shit), but I’m still reasonably happy with how my girl Tiratola came out!

Tiratola is meant to be an homage to that tried-and-true staple of the monster movie genre - movie companies from other countries trying to cash in on a trend! It’s how the world got creatures like Gorgo, Paleosaurus, and Reptilicus - creatures whose movies were far from the source material, but were packaged as being the same thing in their posters and translated titles overseas, leading to weirdness like Godzilla vs Mothra becoming ‘Watang and the Fabulous Kingdom of Monsters’ in its Italian release, the infamous cut of ‘The Volcano Monsters,’ and so on. As such, she takes the basic concept of Tyrantis - ‘giant green prehistoric reptilian monster with a long tail and horns that breathes fire’, and reconstructs it through that lens. To that end, she’s also somewhat based on slurpasaurs and on cheap rubber props, staples of Italian monster cinema.

Designwise, I based her quite heavily on, well, monitor lizards as well as the classic LEGO dragon model plus the movie poster design for Reptilicus - both are a nice combination of reptilian features that doesn’t really lend itself to any particular order, with Kraydi factoring in as another reference. Indeed, Tiratola’s meant to be a cousin to that kaiju, another of the varanid lizard lineage that would have lead to dragons and their kin in the Lost Epoch - she’s meant to be a bit farther down that evolutionary line than Kraydi is, but still not exactly a direct ancestor.

I was struggling to get a feel for Tiratola’s personality at first, but I managed to get something when I reread ATOM and the way that its reptilian stars think, plus some takes on protective dragons and why they defend humans so much smaller and weaker than they. A big part of this series is about how the kaiju are far more intelligent and empathetic than they let on - I thought it’d be neat to play off of that. While her motivations come from a very different place than they would in a human being or a similar creature, the end result is still the same: if it feels good to help others, and doing so is relatively easy, why not do so? I also added a good deal of Ogra and Reptisaurus as well - I figured it would be only fitting.

The thing about her visiting Pisa is a nod to Dinosaurs Attack, the card where the Rhedosaurus and Giant Behemoth teamed up to destroy the Leaning Tower, while her battle with the giant is taken from the battle between the dragon Taro and the Cyclops in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. The date of her discovery is also the date that Reptilicus was released in theaters, albeit moved back a few years.

[theramseyloft]

what the story behind kou?

I have been the columbid specialist volunteer for the local wildlife rehab for almost as long as I have had doves.

Most of what they got in were orphaned or injured Mourning and Collared doves, so I primarily fostered the Mourning pweeps for soft release and found homes for the collared doves.

Feral pigeons didn’t come in as often, but my specialization in hand rearing columbids meant those came to me too.

This is 5 week old Ankhou next to a two week old mourning dove the day we got them.

Some kind soul saw him running circles around the base of a lamp post in a parking lot, screaming for parents who were anxiously watching him, but has no way to get him off the ground to safety.

Instead of leaving him, they scooped him up and rushed him to Highland’s wildlife center, who immediately called me to come get him.

For reference, the Billboard Babies, Dodger and Alex, were 5 weeks old when they arrived.

This is what Ankhou SHOULD have looked like.

But his parents simply had not been able to find enough to feed him.

This is him the same day after his first meal.

You can see down on his head in that photo, meaning that he didn’t lose those feathers he’s missing.

He is so emaciated that his body had to prioritize growing bones over growing feathers because he simply did not have the building materials to produce both at the same time.

Here he is a week later, and you can just see him finally getting some pins on his wee head.

We had ankhou before we had the incubator, so he spent a lot of time on me to stay warm.

As he grew, I talked him through everything like a toddler.

I had read this study on Pigeon cognition pointing out that they learn the equivalent of words by the same mechanic as human children.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150204184447.htm

And I was curious to see if that could be done in real time by supplying him the names of objects he was looking at or interacting with, describing his actions, asking about his mood, and describing mine.

To my surprise and delight, he started responding logically to sentences directed at him in such a way that I could tell which words registered correctly and which ones didn’t quite mean anything to him yet.

He has a rudimentary capacity to answer yes or no questions, and understands pretty abstract concepts like help, apology, and consent.

Along with language, though, he was picking up on my behavior patterns.

A little back ground...

I am an autistic woman with ADHD, PTSD, and pretty severe general anxiety.

Those last two things largely from a long history of systematic physical and emotional abuse by my parents, guardians, and peers.

I am nonverbal most of the time because I don’t think in words. I think in pictures, sounds, and sensations and have to manually translate them into words before I can verbally articulate them.

Under sufficient duress, my throat physically closes, and I can’t mechanically speak.

I can usually type or write fine under that circumstance, but if something distresses me enough beyond that point, my connection to language severs completely and I no longer have access to my proverbial internal word bank.

At that point, I understand actions and tone of voice, and that is it.

The problem is that I can’t tell when I am bordering that state of shut down, so, from my perspective, I can be out in public and suddenly just cease to function with no warning or discernible cause.

Ankhou is practically hard wired to pick up on my tells.

And me shutting down freaks him right tf out.

So he has two levels of alerts he taught himself to perform.

If I’m getting stressed at a rapid level, he will sit on my shoulder or knee and lean against my cheek or hand.

That’s my cue to stop what I’m dong to pet him and do my breathing exercises and practice mindful self evaluation.

Standing on my chest to stare me in the face is a much more urgent warning that I will shut down in the next 20-45 seconds, so I need to find a quiet place out of the way to sit down and focus on the softness of his feathers and my breathing exercises.

If he could not get to me before shut down, he will fuss with my hands until I move one, then bunt under it like a little feathered cat.

If he can get me to stroke him, that’s usually step one towards bringing me back down and getting me to where I can function.

He will lose interest and go do his own thing when I’m back to base line.

When we’re out in public, that usually means he leans to ask me to bring him closer to something he wants to look at.

He knows the difference between physically tired, shut down, and crashing from a blood sugar spike, which all look the same from the outside, and all feel the same to me.

If I’m crashing, he just will NOT let me fall asleep. What ever that takes. 

Usually biting me in increasingly sensitive places until something rouses me.

If nothing does, he does looking for my husband or house mates and pitches an absolute fit until some one comes and checks on me.

Our training program here at the Ramsey Loft is designed around what we learned from the practical applications of all the studies I have read on pigeon cognition to communication with Ankhou.

It’s pretty much a constant shifting of applying every new thing we learn based on “What do I wish I had known when Ankhou was this age?”

Unfortunately, only a dog, or in some place a miniature horse can have the legal distinction of Service Animal.

But pigeons are uniquely suited because of their natural sociology and cognition to a wide variety of mental illness specific service and therapy work, so we are researching to try to eventually get the laws changed to include pigeons as potential Service Animals.

[tenmillionwhumperflies]

Cloudwalker Series Part 19

This is fine, I didn’t need my heart anyway. Hope you like this one. It’s funny that I got an ask about the cloudwalker venom, because this one will sorta explain why Dyan’s venom didn’t show itself easily. That little ask is here. I’ll explain properly at the bottom of this post.

Warnings: Contains blood, treating injuries, mention of threats of disfigurement and teeth whump. There’s also a lot of emotional numbness and mention of child (very young cloudwalker) whump.

Master-list Here

Word Count: 2200

@just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi

Dyan sat on the edge of the bed in a perfect haze, completely stunned by everything that had happened in the course of ten minutes. He’d barely acknowledged that Blue had fallen asleep on his shoulder. Orrien’s panic wasn’t quite registering even though a small voice inside was screaming at him to react, to do something.

But there was just… nothing, no strength in him, no breeze to fly on, no emotions left to pour. He was dried up, stale, empty… He was too caught up in the wave of fear that was only now catching up to him. There was the gut-wrenching realisation that he’d gotten into a fight with that cloudwalker. He had bitten. So many awful things were bound to happen because of that. He’d be punished, everyone would be so mad. He was violent, he’d snapped, and now he was dangerous. That only meant bad things. That was the threat that had lingered over him if he’d ever bitten or fought anyone or anything.

Now there was no going back. Even if it had been a short fight, it had been terrifying and violent, and Dyan hadn’t had a clue what to do. His instincts were gagged, smothered from always living with humans. He didn't know how to fight. All he knew was that he had to protect Blue with everything he had. He just couldn't let Blue suffer. He slowly looked down at himself, seeing the wounds that had been left behind, feeling the pain of each and every one of them. He looked and Blue and whined, lowering his wings. This wasn’t fair, then again, they were cloudwalkers. Nothing was fair.

Dyan dragged his gaze away slowly when he heard someone coming up the stairs, it was Avizon, with Ihuka following, ready to catch him. Avizon froze at the sight of him, staring at his wounds. Ihuka sat down in the corner out of the way, watching them all with concern. Dyan gulped and bowed his head, not entirely sure what to expect.

“Dyan… What in all the realms happened?!” he exclaimed, limping forward and kneeling in front of him. He cupped his cheek and brushed the hair out of his face. Dyan couldn't help but flinch, even if it was a delayed response. Everything was so sluggish, muffled, foggy. He didn't know how to snap out of it, if he could, but he didn't want to. The distance was better than feeling the fear…

“They were attacked by a wild cloudwalker. I think it thought Blue was a human, so tried to save them. Dyan got into a fight to protect him. They’re both startled and in a bad way,” Orrien explained. Dyan appreciated the help. “Bad...“ Dyan mumbled. “Dyan?” Avizon frowned, “Little bird, talk to me...”

But Dyan was lost in his mind, he needed a few moments to piece together exactly what had happened.

Avizon tried to get Dyan to look at him, but there was a distant fog in his eyes, he wasn’t completely there. For a moment he looked through Avizon rather than at him. Avizon gave up with a soft sigh and stroked Dyan’s hair.

Dyan looked down at his bloody hands and stared. “I was… really bad, master,” he whispered. “I bit again...” Avizon’s gaze went up to Dyan’s horn, the area where it had been sawed off because he’d bitten a man.

Avizon held his hands out and Dyan inched closer until he was in Avizon’s arms, leaning forward so much he slipped off the bed and sat on the floor in front of him. Avizon kept him close, but Dyan didn’t cry, he didn’t sob and beg as he usually might. He just sat, staring at his hands. Avizon gently rubbed his back and wings.

“Why do you think that you’ve been bad?” Avizon asked quietly.

“B.because… I got into a fight… fighting bad. Trainer always told me...” “Trainer?” Avizon asked, confused until a thought hit him “Oh, the people from the ‘zoo’?” Dyan nodded slowly. “Biting bad… fighting bad… Not being good gets you sent away. G.gets your nails burned and your teeth blunted a.and you go in the box a.and...” Dyan’s lip started to wobble, and that was the most emotion he’d shown ever since he’d gotten here. His hand went up to his head but then dropped back down.

“Deep breaths. Remember, you’re not there anymore. It’s alright. You were protecting Blue. I admit, I didn’t think you had it in you, but I’m glad you did. You’re a good bird... Talk to me, let this all out, don’t keep things bottled up. You need to process this.”

Dyan wiped his bloody mouth on his arm before he dared bury his face in his master’s chest, but he didn’t hold him. He didn’t want to get him covered in his blood when he didn’t really have any other clothes. He just sat stiffly, and the emotion soon faded away again.

“Ihuka, a cloth. Cloth?” Avizon tried to instruct.

“C.cloff...” Ihuka thought hard, trying to figure it out but he didn’t know that word, so Dyan mumbled a translation. Ihuka rushed off and sure enough, returned with a cloth and a bowl. Avizon praised him tenderly.

Dyan was quiet again as Avizon gently cleaned all the blood away from his hands, face and arms. He still bled, but Dyan hadn’t been paying attention to that blood. Avizon carefully pulled him close, but it didn’t feel possessive. “What happened, Dyan?”

“We were playing,” he mumbled. “‘t was fun, I got to feel water for the first time," a shadow of a smile appeared on his lips but then it was gone again. "A.and we got back onto the shore and got dressed and then this cloudwalker was just… there. He attacked Blue. Ihuka tried to help, but he got pushed away. I don’t remember jumping or flying, but I must have… I.I just had to get Blue away from him. I had to help him… but it hurt… h.he was so mad and he… it just hurt."

“He was able to get its attention off of Blue and onto him,” Orrien added. “As you can see, it was a hell of a scrap. I had to catch him and Blue both before they both dropped out of the sky.”

Avizon stared at him in surprise. “So the canary does have some falcon in him...” “‘M sorry,” Dyan whispered. “You… you probably don’t want me anymore… no one wants a bad bird...” Avizon hugged him a little tighter. “I’m proud of you, Dyan. You faced your fears to save Blue.”

Dyan shook his head. “Bad… always bad… I.I don’t want to go in the box... O.or lose my horn...” “You’re not going anywhere. Shhhhhhh, I’ve got you, you’re safe. Focus, Dyan. It’s all okay.”

Orrien eased Blue onto the bed to sleep. He took a moment to stroke the hair out of his face. Then he got up, approaching Dyan.

“Will you let me fix these?” he asked gently. Dyan hesitated, “But I...” “You don’t deserve to hurt,” Avizon said before he could even get his sentence out. Dyan flinched under his challenge. “You don’t. You are a good bird- the best. We can stay a little while until Blue wakes up and calms down tomorrow. I’ll go back to the castle alone for a day or two if I have to.”

Orrien started to clean the wound but it intensified his already stinging pain until it made Dyan cry and cling to Avizon. It was just too much for him. He was scared and tired and sore but still he had to suffer more and more. He forgot about the blood, he didn’t care. He just wanted comfort which Avizon was willing to give. He clung to him as best he could. “I’m right here, you’re safe… Shhhh, I know, I know."

Avizon held him patiently until Orrien had healed or bandaged all his wounds. Dyan had gotten sleepy during that time, hiding deeper and deeper in his own mind. He’d learned with Erix how to escape from his body for a little while and he couldn’t help but do that again. He was running out of strength and all he wanted to do was curl up and sleep to disappear from it all for a while. But he wasn't allowed to want anything, but despite telling himself that so many times all he yearned for was to hide in a soft blanket and be held by someone who cared about him- to be held by Blue so they could protect each other.

"M.May I sleep on the bed with Blue?" he mumbled softly, barely even realising he'd said it out loud. Avizon stroked his hair, "Of course you can. I'm going to pick you up, brace yourself."

Dyan let out a little whimper as Avizon scooped him in his arms with a grunt and lifted him up and onto the bed.

"Your leg," he murmured. No, no, no, he couldn’t be the reason his master got even more hurt. Everything he ever did was bad, why did master, keep him? Why did he insist that he was good? Despite his fear and frustration, he was too drained to panic.

"I can take it,” Avizon ground out as he eased Dyan on the bed beside Blue.

Avizon helped him onto his side and guided his arms around Blue so he could hold him. Dyan adjusted himself so he could cover Blue with his wing. Avizon gently ran his hand down the wing. “You’re a good bird, but now you need to rest. Sleep, Dyan.”

Avizon turned to Ihuka, checking him over for wounds but Dyan wasn't looking. He was staring at the awful scars on Blue's back. So violent, and jagged. They'd healed badly and Dyan could almost feel the pain he'd endured. He groaned and buried his face into Blue's back. Seeking comfort. He cuddled in close.

"D.Dyan?" Blue suddenly murmured. Dyan whimpered as Blue managed to slowly turn to face him. Dyan lowered his gaze. 

Blue didn't say another word. He just reached an arm over and hugged him close. Dyan released a breath he hadn't realised he's been holding and snuggled against him again. Everything faded away except for Blue holding him. He felt warm, welcome. It was different than when his master held him. Dyan covered him with his wing again and didn't realise until it was already done that their legs had tangled together slightly.

Despite how numb he felt, Blue's comfort was enough to make him fall asleep and escape for a little while.

_____

"They've grown very close over the last few days," Orrien observed. He gestured for Ihuka to go to bed but he shook his head. Orrien tilted his head to show his confusion at the little bird. He patted the bottom of the bed to see if he just didn't want to interrupt Blue and Dyan but still he shook his head.

"Keeping watch, are you?" Orrien mumbled. "Alright, but here."

Orrien grabbed some spare pillows and blankets and put them on the floor next to Ihuka, who promptly began to make a nest to get comfortable on, but he didn't lie down to sleep. His nose twitched.

Avizon sighed, making Orrien look up. "Nocturnal… he probably can't sleep, not after that." "Then we'll leave him to it. They've all had a difficult time."

"Dyan looked so lost…" Avizon mumbled, making Orrien's heart sink. "So confused and distant." "I know," Orrien said gently. He too had noticed. "I've seen that look on you plenty. He left the present, faded off into his own mind. I'm hoping a good sleep will be enough to entice him out of it."

"He did perk up with Blue at least," Avizon said, he looked down at his hands and frowned. "I wish he could have done the same for me…"

"In his mind, you're his master, he was bad and you deal out punishment- even if you wouldn't. He was clearly thinking back to old memories, he wasn't able to realise that you only wanted to help him. He still took comfort out of holding you, I could tell."

Avizon nodded slowly, but he looked defeated. But it was good to see he actually wanted to help. 

"I can't help but wonder if there's more to them than friendship," Orrien admitted. “It’s very possible,” Orrien said, “But there’s no way to be sure. We’ll just have to keep an eye on the situation.”

Avizon pursed his lips, “if that is the case, I won’t stop them. But I am worried. What if that bird that attacked them, perhaps they are part of that resistance we were talking about?”

Avizon looked down at Blue and Dyan fast asleep in bed, holding each other close. Ihuka was comfortable in his corner, but he looked tired and somewhat miserable. Avizon stroked his hair gently, “I wish I could speak your language so I could help you...” Avizon sat down beside him, but he was surprised to find that Ihuka leaned his head against him. Perhaps he also wanted comfort and company.

Avizon looked down at him with curious concern. “Good bird… get some sleep. You don’t have to protect them, that’s my job. Sleep...” Avizon gently put his hand on Ihuka’s forehead, encouraging him to sleep rather than forcing him. Ihuka soon faded off into sleep.

Then there was quiet, as everyone was left to recover from their terrifying ordeal.

So yeah, real quick, the reason Dyan wasn’t producing venom was literally because he has never bitten and never used the venom (which cloudwalkers are meant to use like every other day to hunt), so his body was just kinda shutting down his venom glands. That ask isn’t cannon, but it does mean that Dyan’s body doesn’t really produce venom like Ihuka can.

[tf2-hoe]

For the self harm request you did, I was wondering if you could do the rest of the mercs. I totally understand if you feel uncomfortable writing it

Offensive and Defensive Headcanons - Self Harm Scars

Part 1

Hey, I am going to assume the link I posted is what you’re referring to, if not, then PM me and I will write up a new one!

Scout

He had her in his lap, hands around her waist

She tasted like sugary candy, and he just couldn’t get enough of the taste

He wanted more

His hands grazed her sides, inviting, but not invading

Or so he thought

Her hands flew to his chest, allowing her to launch away from him

“Babe?!”

“DON’T TOUCH ME!”

She sounded petrified, and Scout was worried to death that he had just made a fatal mistake

“Hey, you gotta tell me what’s goin’ on.”

“They’re disgusting and I hate them!”

“What do you hate?”

“THIS!”

She rips off her shirt to reveal circular indents covering her hips like moon craters

Scout’s silence was deafening

How was he supposed to react to this?

“Do you have any idea how disgusting these are?! How horrible I am for doing this? How many cigarettes I went through to do this? I hate it! I hate myself! I am-”

His arms held her far too tightly for her comfort, but it was all he could do to keep himself from screaming

“Disgusting? Horrible? What are you talking about? That bull you went through doesn’t mean anything to who you are now. If you want it to, then fine, but you clearly don’t sound happy about it, so I’m assuming you didn’t like what you did to yourself. That doesn’t mean anything! All that matters that you’re here and alive. I want you alive, I want you here with me. Please, never feel ashamed like this again. I love you.”

Heavy

Heavy holds her close to his body, practically absorbing her warmth

This was all he ever wanted, and it felt like a good time to initiate something more intimate than just holding each other

At first he started kissing her neck and smiling when she started to giggle

His hands held her thighs just a touch firmer to keep her close to him

"Do you want to be closer?"

"We are close."

"No, as close as two humans can be with each other."

Her entire body went rigid, and it took all of her willpower to not peel away from him right there

"You do not have to! I was only suggesting."

"...I want to, Misha, but there's a few things you need to know about me first."

"I trust you, and whatever you tell me, I will not blame you."

She stands up slowly, turning to him with a subtle shiver that, for her sake, Misha did not point out

"I'm not a pretty woman, Misha, far from it. I'm dirty, broken, and I'm in a lot of pain all the time."

His eyes were wide with panic, trying to decipher entirely what she's getting at

Was he translating something wrong? Surely this doesn't mean what he thinks it means!

"A long time ago, I figured out a way to help myself."

A false hope grew before shattering like glass as her shirt lifted up to hide just under her breasts

Pinpoint scars scattered her hips, and even her stomach, like stars to the sky

He felt horrified

How does someone react to this?

"A-And I know it's not what you wanted, and I know somebody with mental problems is just going to be a burden to you. I-I didn't want to stab myself, but I couldn't stop."

Her tears broke his heart, and he raced to scoop her up like a child

"Shame is nothing. Why let it control you after all this time? After everything you've been through, it cannot rule your life any longer. I am not angry, nor sad, nor upset. I am scared for you, not for those scars or how they came about. I am worried about you because you're all that matters, not those scars!"

He rocks her softly in his arms, prepping himself to help her recover from a lifetime's worth of pain

Demo

He just couldn’t resist the woman he had before him

Delicate, kind and absolutely gorgeous

Why would he ever try to deny what he feels for her?

So why not push it a little? Take some risks?

He learned very soon why communication is important

The second he held her hips so he could kiss her, her hands peeled them off in a panic

She threw herself away from him, disturbed at the sensation of his hands on them

“Dear? What is it?”

“Y-You aren’t supposed to see it. The hammer, the marks, the bruising, the scars... You can’t see what I did.”

“Did what? What is it?”

His heart only pounded harder when she hesitated with her words

“I don’t want you to see them.”

“I’m not going to judge you, beautiful. Show them or not, I won’t judge you.”

“Promise.”

“I swear on my Scrumpy.”

The heartfelt words got a chuckle out of her, allowing them both to ease a little

“Alright, just... give me a second.”

Demo looked away to give her some space and only turned back when she gave the word

Her pants and shirt were lying on the floor in a neat, neglected pile, but his attention was not on her body

Pink, splotchy bubbles connect and cover her delicate hips like a thick spiderweb

“There’s a reason I don’t like being around Pyro.”

“Why would you ever...?!”

“I look disgusting, huh?”

“No, no! I’m just scared, dear. I think I’m allowed to be, after all.”

He winces at the wet stains forming on her face

“I’m worthless.”

“Stop.”

“I hate myself.”

“Please.”

“I’m just-”

“STOP IT!”

He doesn’t mean to scare her, or to make her upset, but her pain is eating him alive

“Is that what you felt? That pain? That agony? No wonder you’d turn to something so violent...”

He gently offers his arms to her, in which she gladly hides herself in them

“There isn’t something I can say to make the pain go away, or something I can do to make these scars go away. I don’t know what you want me to say about them, or what you want me to do about them. All I can say is that I promise to be here for you, for better or worse.”

Pyro

There were few times they would ever let themself get as vulnerable as they are now

They felt her hands roaming their body, causing them to gasp at the sensitive sensations

They almost wanted to protest at the strange touch, but they instead grasped her waist

“P-Please, don’t.”

The fear caused them to remove their hands and question her

“It’s bad, you’re not going to like it.”

Pyro shakes their head, pressing their head to hers

“...You’re too sweet, Py.

She sighs, looking at how willing they are

“Alright, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Upon removing her shirt and averting her eyes, Pyro sees small strips of scars covering her soft skin

“I had an obsession with my body... It was too much for me, and I figured it’d be easier to just... peel it away. Gross, huh?”

Her nonchalant tone fails to hide the shame in her eyes

A person of no words, they simply hold their S/O close to their chest

Sometimes their hands will graze over the sensitive marks on her body, but only to show that those scars are her skin, and therefore are her

Soldier

He had her against a wall with her legs around his waist

She had the sweetest smile as she pressed her head to his chest

“You look beautiful, you know that?”

She felt something wrong when he said that

And just like that, her illusion was shattered

She wants her lye and her knife

She can’t breathe, all she can do is claw at her sides to destroy the uneven markings

All Soldier could do was hold her hands until she could calm down enough to get her to Medic

He felt frozen and unable to react for the first time in his life

“Jane, please.”

“What? What do you want me to do?”

“Make it stop.”

“Make what stop? You have to tell me, cupcake.”

“I need to fix my body. I need these ugly marks to go.”

“What marks?”

“THE SCARS!”

Her deafening voice caused him to back away

It was here that Soldier could get a good look at her body, allowing him to take in the old, acidic scars covering her hips

“I was made the wrong size, Jane. I had to fix it somehow... Now I’ve made it worse... The skin is even worse, now.”

“Wrong size?”

He’s trying to take this one step at a time, but all of this information makes him feel like he’s falling down a flight of stairs

“I was 110 pounds, I wasn’t skinny enough. I’m still not skinny!”

“Why does your weight matter so much?”

“Why does it matter?! The skinnier you are, the prettier you are, that’s how it works!”

“No, it isn’t. In ancient Greece, a woman with more weight than average was considered beautiful because she had access to food, which was considered a luxury.”

“What does that have to do anything?”

“You would be a goddess to them, is what I’m saying.”

He gently takes her into his arms, feeling her shivering, nervous body

“The only reason people think skinny is better than anything else is because during World War II, women took up jobs that men couldn’t. Even though more weight was beautiful, the standard shifted because it was thought that the less weight a woman had, the more capable she was of replacing a man. In the end, all it takes is a big change to get everybody to bandwagon and pick a side. That’s all any “opinion” really is, is just a bunch of people gathering up and deciding what’s going to be the new trend.”

“...so what you’re telling me, is that you being a historian nut has a purpose?”

Soldier grins a little as he hears her relaxed tone

“When has it not?”

Engineer

”You really want this, honeybee?”

“Yes...”

“You don’t sound confident. Are you sure you want this?”

“I do, I’m just a little nervous.”

“Don’t feel pressured, hon. I’ll wait as long as you want, and if you don’t ever want to go that far, I understand. This is a choice from two people that requires the consent of us both.”

“Can you help me with something?”

“Anything.”

“I want to get close to you, but there’s something that I’ve been hiding from you.”

Engineer backs up to give her space

“I won’t be mad, darling. I just need you to help me understand.”

“I have skin missing from my body, and it’s unpleasant to look at.”

“Do you want to show me, or would you rather we wait, instead?”

Her shirt being tossed across the room was his answer

The missing chunks of skin around her waist mapped out strange, thick caverns in her thighs

He couldn’t help but touch them before asking if he even could

“What...?”

“I found a chisel when I was a kid... I didn’t really think about the consequences then, or what it would do to me. All I could think about was that chisels mean carving, and carving means getting the perfect body type.”

“Perfect body type?”

“...I lost 20 pounds just by removing what I didn’t want.”

Engie felt sick as he held her, and his eyes stayed away from the scars

“Was it weight?”

“I don’t know... I just liked hurting.”

“If you ever feel like that again, you got to tell me. If not me, then Medic, not him, then someone. Don’t go through this alone, you deserve better than that. I want to help you, I want to keep you safe and happy. This must have been so hard for you to tell me, and I’m so proud of you... Please, let me take care of you, and let me get you some help. I can’t promise to make the pain go away, and I can’t say that it will go away, all I can do is try, darling. Just give me a chance, sweetpea.”

HEAVEN HAVE MERCY THIS TOOK FOREVER! This is officially the longest request I’ve done, and also one of the reasons why I can’t accept requests this long again. They can be far longer than I anticipate, and it takes up more time than I have, which leads to requests being delayed or ignored. But nevertheless, the new method I’m using with max three at a time seems to be working well!

Thank you for the submission, and I hope you’re doing well.

[writerofblocks]

Search Term: Caerbolga

For context, @joasakura and I have a Saints Row AU going where my boss Bridget is the, well, Boss, and their boss Adam is a cat/fox-adjacent looking alien they scoop out of the goop tanks along the way. Takes place a month or so post-SR4.

[prompt was “whelve - to bury something deep, to hide” from a prompt list somewhere on my blog, i’ll find it later.]

===

“How long have you been hiding this?”

CID bobbled serenely up and down, his single glowing eye looking steadily at her. [I did not hide the file,] he replied, voice nearly monotone through the vocal synthesizers. [When you asked for any information in the System on Caerbolga and the possibility of survivors, I gave it to you.]

Bridget swiped her fingers across the screen, the Zin symbols swiftly translating themselves into their English equivalents. There wasn’t much to go on as far as files went- a few grainy pictures of a space station orbiting a particularly massive asteroid, accompanied by a brief report from a Zin scouting crew confirming the presence of life on board and that the station was Caerbolgan in origin. “Don’t pull this ‘you never asked’ bullshit on me, CID. We’ve been assuming Adam was the last of his kind, and now there’s this?” She gestured to the screen in exasperation. “When was this file even uploaded?”

Pictures and numbers flashed within CID’s eye before he returned his gaze to her. [It was uploaded six years ago, according to human measurements of time.]

Bridget’s fingers slipped on the touchscreen. The words shifted, letters rearranging themselves into German. “Six years-“ she sputtered. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?!”

CID’s body rotated slightly to the right- his equivalent of tilting his head. [If I had told you, what would you have done?]

The characters whirled like a roulette wheel as she scrambled to get the translation app to stop freaking out. “If we’d known earlier we could have, I don’t know, tried to find them, forge an alliance or something-“

[I must remind you there is only a possibility of these Caerbolgans existing.]

“A possibility is better than nothing,” she snapped.

CID’s lens narrowed. [You would have risked the last remnants of free humanity along with the only known Caerbolgan remaining on a possibility?]

The characters settled again, this time in the form of symbols she’d never seen-on Earth, at least. Most of it was gibberish to her, but here and there she could pick out lettering she’d seen on Adam’s suit.

[In addition, the ship Kinzie stole is not rated for intergalactic travel,] CID continued. [Stealing a capable ship would alert the Zin to our intentions. It would have placed a greater target on our backs and on the backs of the hypothetical Caerbolgans, should we have managed to contact them.]

Bridget pushed the screen away from the throne in frustration. It hovered in the air, screen flickering, the Caerbolgan symbols mocking her attempts to understand. “So it would have been a terrible idea, I get it. That doesn’t change that we need to go find them.” She held up a finger to silence CID’s ready correction. “Don’t fucking tell me it’s just a possibility. They have to be there.” She pulled the screen back towards her and resuming fiddling with the translator. “They have to be,” she quietly repeated.

Another half roll to the side. God, she wanted to punt his face across the throne room. [Why are you so insistent that they have to be there?]

The symbols on the screen finally flipped back to English letters. With a sigh of relief Bridget closed the file and dragged it over to join the file on Adam she’d lovingly named “Orange Cat Bastard”.

“...Listen,” she said, gesturing at the screen. “The human half of the Saints? We got about as good an ending as we can get. But Adam’s stuck his neck out for us.” She gave a short laugh. “Even if he was an asshole about it some of the time. I want to give something back to him, something that can repay him for what he’s done for me. So they have to be there. I’m not going to accept anything less.”

For a moment CID simply floated next to her, staring straight ahead. He did that sometimes, when he was thinking hard about things. Or when he was being an enigmatic bastard about everything, either or. Eventually he raised his optical lens to look at her. [I understand. Just as I hope you understand why I chose to leave giving you this information until after Zinyak was defeated. But Caerbolga was once my home as well. I did not wish to endanger any of her people- if indeed they still exist- before our victory was assured.]

Bridget blinked. Well. She didn’t expect the Caerbolga comment. She filed it away for later as she closed out the search tabs one by one. “One of these days I’m going to crack open that shell casing and see what other secrets you have knocking around inside your little basketball noggin.”

[To quote a human meme, ‘try me, bitch’.]

“Don’t get me started on Vine, I was missing that shit even before the Earth blew up,” Bridget muttered under her breath, before deactivating the file reader and standing up from her chair. “Come on. We need to go tell Adam.”

[valkyrieofsmut]

Captive Love   12

UF!Sans x Reader (or Frisk if you wanna)

Summary: Sans feels like an asshole. Papyrus agrees that he's a dumbass. 

A/N: Sans is sorry... he's really sorry... he didn't mean to be scary...

Masterlist      Series Masterlist

Story

Dinner in bed.

A soft knock sounded at the door, and (Y/n) looked up from her blanket cocoon of comfort. 

"s-sweetheart- ...sweetheart, 'm sorry," Sans' soft voice told her with a sigh, muffled by the door. "i want ya ta know i wasn't doin' it ta hurt ya, b- but we can talk about it when y're ready, w-whenever ya want… i- th' important thing is- fuck- ...i'm an' asshole, sweetheart, i know it- but ya can't jus'-" he took a breath, calming himself. "ya can't jus' run off inta danger blindly an' 'xpect me ta- ya- ya coulda…" He choked on whatever emotion was filling him, making it hard to talk. "ya coulda been dusted," he whispered against the wood of the door. 

He didn't know if she'd understand, he knew that 'dusted' wasn't the word humans used, and they didn't use 'fall down', either, but it didn't stop them from doing it. And his sweetheart had looked like she was on the edge of falling down when he was in there. 

He couldn't let that happen. He needed his sweetheart to stay alive, stay with him… 

"a-anyway," he said after clearing his throat, able to continue in a more normal tone. "i brought ya some dinner, ya don't haveta open th' door; i'm gonna leave it right here fer ya, an' then i'm gonna go downstairs an' leave ya be fer a bit. i- if ya need me… that's where i'll be… i-if ya need  anythin',  i'll be here- jus' gotta ask, sweetheart…" 

(Y/n) heard him walk away, slowly moving closer to the door and listening closely, not satisfied that he was gone until she heard him downstairs talking with Papyrus. 

She slowly, quietly, opened the door and brought the food in before closing and blocking the chair to it again. 

She ate the food, glad that Sans had put mostly salad and bread on her plate, saving her from much of the lasagna. 

.

"I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU PUT SO MUCH OF THAT OTHER FOOD ON HER PLATE, SANS," Papyrus griped. "IT'S LIKE YOU'RE SAYING THAT MY FOOD ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH…"

“‘s nothin’- nothin’ like that, paps- ‘s jus’- s-she’s a human, y’know, they need, like, extra nutrients an’ minerals an' shit like that. gotta keep ‘er healthy…” Sans trailed off, a little nervous sweat beading on his skull. 

They dug in to the lasagna, Sans mostly scooting it around on his plate as he tried to push the memory of his sweetheart shaking in terror caused by him from his mind. 

“SO… WHY ISN’T SHE EATING WITH US, TONIGHT?” Papyrus asked after a few moments of silence. 

“‘cuz imma fuckin’ dumbass,” Sans murmured. 

“WELL, YOU WERE A DUMBASS YESTERDAY, AND THAT DIDN’T STOP HER…” 

“heh…” A humorless laugh left Sans’ mouth. 

It was quiet again, and in the silence, Sans heard the soft sound of a plate being set in the hall and his door closing

He stood and slouched up to the hall, taking the plate and making his way back to the sink. 

Papyrus watched his brother, his worry growing in his bones. He’d never seen Sans walk so much, except when he was very low on magic, and before he’d learned how to use his lazy shortcuts. His eyelights followed him as he made his way back to the stairs until he couldn’t see him anymore. 

Sans stopped in front of his door, stooping to set the plate in his hand down. 

“s-sweetheart,” he called softly. “i- i brought ya some dessert… ‘s from th’ store, papyrus brought it back…” He hesitated, taking a few breaths before leaning his skull against the door, wishing he could just make her feel how sorry he was, and that he hadn’t meant to scare her or harm her through the door. 

He took another deep breath and let it out before pulling away and basically dragging himself back to the table. 

“WHAT HAPPENED, SANS?” Papyrus asked after a few more silent moments. 

“told ya; ‘m a fuckin’ dumbass…” Sans muttered as he scooped another bite onto his fork. 

Papyrus didn’t know what to say to that, so there was silence as he tried to find some words to express himself correctly. 

There was a soft sound on the stairs, one that they wouldn’t have heard if it wasn’t so quiet, and it made a near silent trail to the kitchen. 

Sans ducked his head guiltily as he heard the sound of clothing rustling as his sweetheart made her way to the sink, sure he could feel her wary gaze on him the entire time. 

Papyrus’s eyelights stuck to her like glue as she moved, sockets creasing as he squinted a little. 

He opened his mouth, about to say something, but Sans shook his head, looking up at him and quietly pleading, “boss…”

Papyrus closed his mouth with a click of his teeth and let out a breath, going back to his lasagna. 

(Y/n) walked back out through the doorway, and Papyrus waited until they heard the soft sound of Sans’ door closing again before he spoke, “YOU PUT THE COLLAR ON HER AFTER ALL.” 

It wasn’t a question. The strap of leather was plain to see, especially with the way that shirt hung off of her shoulder. 

Sans winced again. 

“You’ll Be Making Her Safer,” his brother told him quietly, knowing how much he hated the collar, and how serious whatever had happened to make him put it on her had to have been. 

.

Dinner had long since been over, and (Y/n) was still alone in Sans’ room, sitting on the bed, trying to do whatever she could to get the stupid collar off of her. But nothing was working. 

She tried everything, and nothing worked. 

She tugged at it long into the evening, hearing whatever show the two had been watching on the tv downstairs turn off and after a few moments, Papyrus’ door close. 

She felt her body stiffen, hearing another set of footsteps coming toward the door, hesitating in the hall… and then a dull whump as something hit the floor. 

Suddenly, she felt like she had to use the bathroom. 

Because she suddenly couldn’t leave the room, most likely. It was always the one thing you couldn’t do that ended up being the one thing you somehow needed to do most, like having an itch on your nose after being told you can’t touch anything. 

She sighed and violently wiggled her hips, feeling an urgency to use the bathroom, now. 

Fiiiiiine, she mentally cursed, getting up and going to the door. 

She quietly opened the door and made her way out, seeing Sans sitting hunched over next to the door. She quickly moved away from him, not wanting to be too close, and hurried to the bathroom, but caught the way his skull turned away from her, seemingly in shame. 

He hadn’t moved by the time she got back, but she could see the glow of his eyelights reflecting off of the wall. 

She faked more courage than she had and walked past him into the room, closing the door and sticking the chair against it again. 

She sat on the bed, watching the door for a bit. 

He really seemed like he felt guilty… sorry, even… but then, why didn’t he just take the fucking collar off of her?! 

Well… not like she’d given him much chance to get close enough to her… For good reason!

She sighed, conflicted. 

Finally, she decided what to do. 

 Sans let his skull rest against the wall uncomfortably. 

He deserved this. 

He deserved more than this for scaring his sweetheart so badly… 

The door next to him cracked open, and he heard quick movement back across the floor to his bed. 

After a moment, his skull turned, his sockets opening to see that the door was still cracked. 

Was his sweetheart telling him that it was ok to come in? That she’d calmed down enough to see him? 

Sans slowly climbed up, going into his room and looking over at where she was laying in a huddled pile on the bed, surrounded by his blanket. 

That was fine. He didn’t need a blanket to sleep anyway, and if it made her feel better, he’d give it to her. 

Sans kicked off his shoes and quietly climbed onto his bed, laying down so he could stare at his sweetheart, silently apologizing. 

After a few minutes, the rising movement of the blanket grew regular, and he thought she was asleep. 

His sweet, wonderful, sweetheart. 

Sans’ hand reached out and his phalanges touched her, gently stroking over her a few times before he pulled it back to himself, staying on one side of the bed. He wasn’t going to cause her any other worry, and if that meant staying an arm’s length away for the night, he would. 

A/N: Welp. We're getting to the part where Sweetheart starts talking a bit next chapter, but starts talking a lot soon. So prepare for such terrible spelling... it gave me shiver just looking at it. and also, do a favor and let me know if you're going to want translations? So I can set those up beforehand... examples so you can make an informed decision: Whahy w...t'r Ikh do Oh, hey, also, I have another Undertale story (a reverse harem with multiple universes of skelles) and posted a chapter of it, too! It’s on Ao3. It’s on chapter 4. See how much I get behind on here from stupid editing problems? Ugh.

@tephi101  @lilypalmer1987  @pingu89  @gifsbysimplysonia  @omnomsauruswrites<3U!  @keldachick  @Randomfandompenguin  @mannls  @screeching-student-unknown  @lizfawn  @ya-lyublu-tebya  @their-bibliophile  @the-fifth-marauder03  (let me know if y’all wanna be taken off, btw, since it’s not marvel lol)

[diddlesanddoodles]

Dumpling ch. 20

(Author’s notes: Posting this one early as a thank you to @thespicynoodle for all the amazing art work they did for Dumpling!)

To Yale’s credit, he did not immediately dismiss her claims of dead people in the walls as the  stressed induced imaginings of a lunatic. He waited for her to calm down and then asked her gently, “What do you mean in the walls? Here in the castle?”

She nodded, fighting a fresh wave of tears. “I saw them...when...”

“S’alright. Don’t force yerself. Just take deep breaths and talk when yer good and ready, eh?”

After a moment, she had regained enough composure to begin to explain just how she had managed to come across the catacombs.  

“Oh, Dumplin’. No need t’be scared of some dusty old bones,” Yale assured her. “The dead can’t hurt ya.”  

“But...”

“Probably been there since the castle was first built thousands of years ago. This place has been destroyed and rebuilt and switched hands so many times over the centuries I wouldn’t be surprised t’know it use to be a human castle. Someone had t’ave built them tunnels after all.”

“Yale...” she said quietly. She was so afraid to say it out loud. “They spoke to me...”

He blinked in confusion and seemed to have trouble understanding exactly what she was trying to say. “The...bones?”

“I’m not crazy...” she sobbed, feeling the shame and fear of not being believed, but Yale hurriedly hushed her.  

“Nah, nah. I believe ya!” he assured her, bending his head lower as if to show her his grinning face. “Just...never heard of bones talkin’ before.”  

He watched her for a moment, studying her face. “Ya tell Maevis about it?”

She shook her heard as she wiped the moisture from her face with the collar of her smock.

“Just you...”

“Just me?” Yale asked pleasantly surprised. “Well, don’t that make me feel special.”  

She could not help but smile at that and it was glorious how it seemed to break apart the heavy stone that seemed to have lodged inside her stomach. The welling of emotion seemed to be drying up and she began to feel a little more in control of herself.  

“S’ what did they say?” he asked, propping his head up in his hand. “These chatty bones.”  

“I couldn’t understand them at first,” she said. “But they were saying...the prophecy about the King? The one that… why everyone calls him the Gold King...”

Yale looked incredulous and just a bit disappointed. “That’s...odd. I would’ve thought they’d have something a little more interestin’ to say stead of that old thing.”

“But in my dream...the nightmare, I mean...” she said. “It said...he said that someone could see me and was coming...”  

“Hm,” Yale pondered that, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “That what has ya scared, eh? Something from the dark’s gonna come after ya?”

"I don’t know...maybe...”

“Well,” said the young giant. “I’ll say this. You’ve had a rough go of it fer as young as ya are. I’m not gonna tell ya yer wrong to be scared, ‘cause if I were ya, I’d be terrified all the time. But if ya can believe anything, ya can believe me in this…"

He pinched her face gently between two fingers. “I ain’t gonna let anything bad happen to ya.”  

She did believe him, but even that wasn’t enough to fully erase the questions and concerns. As though sensing her doubt, he squished her face lightly and despite her somber mood,

Nenani could not keep the giggle from escaping. Yale hummed, satisfied.  

“Have I ever told you about my family or how I started here?” he asked. Nenani shook her head, still smiling, as she pushed his fingers away. He gave her no paused and scooped her up then settled into his bunk himself. One he made himself comfortable, he sat her down on one of his bent knees. “Well, there’s me Mum. Dad passed some years ago when I was small, around yer age. I’m the oldest and only son and then there’re m’ sisters. I’ve got six younger sisters, lass. Six! Lots of hungry lil’uns running round, gettin’ into scapes and pullin’ hair. I had t’be there fer ‘im when I was still a babe myself.”  

Yale paused, lost in thought, and then seemed to snap back to attention. He smiled warmly at her. “And ya remind me a whole lot of ‘em. Th’way they were back then. Suppose that might be why I took such a likin’ t’ya right after I first caught ya.”

He poked her in the belly, grinning when he was able to weasel another giggle from her.

“It was real rough after dad died. Real tough. Mum and me were at it alone just the two of us fer a long while, just trying to keep food in the house and a fire lit. I...didn’t handle it well. Started stealin’ and being a lil shit and makin’ hard fer Mum.” He paused to take a long rejuvenating breath. “I know how hard life can get when ya don’t have just one of yer folks around and had I lost Mum too...I don’t know what I’d done. I was a mess back then. Worried Mum sick that I’d end up arrested or worse. So she got me a job here as a tenderfoot under Farris since he had a reputation fer straightenin’ out snot nosed hooligans like me. M’first day I called Farris fat and he punched me in the face.”

Seeing Nenani’s incredulous expression, Yale laughed. “Oh yeh, I did. It took some time, but he managed to straighten me out right. Hatin’ him fer it fer a while too. But once he saw that I wasn’t entirely hopeless and actually had a brain, he made me his assistant and started teachin’ me about the spices and plants. Gave me responsibilities. A purpose. A direction t’my life that I didn’t have before. And in a lot of ways he saved m’life too. And m’family’s. S’why he call yell and scream and curse at me all he wants all day long and I’ll still be singin’ his praises till the day I’m six feet under the dirt. He made me family.”

“...but don’t you miss your Mom and sisters?”

“A’course! Oh, I write to’ em when I can,” Yale said. “Four of m’sisters are married with lil’uns of their own now. I try to visit ‘em just before th’ winter solstice, but I haven’t been in a long while. Last letter I wrote t’my Mum was just after you came to us actually. Wanna know what she said?”

“What?”

“Well, first she scolded me fer makin’ ya think we were gonna eat ya and makin’ ya cry, but then she also reminded me to remember what it was like right after Dad passed and all that hurt I had inside and how scared I was. She said imagine if ya were one of my lil’ sisters goin’ through all what ya were and to make ya feel like ya had a safe place to just be to get through that hurt.”  

He smiled sadly at her and for a moment, he looked much older than he was and she could see the faint traces of his own trauma etched into the lines of his face.  

“Now, I know we ain’t ya blood family and maybe we’re not the best role models fer a wee lass, but I think we’re an alright substitution. We do in a pinch, eh?”

Nenani belatedly realized she was crying again, but the fuel that was feeding the tears was an entirely different emotion. “So ya don’t need to be scared no more.”    

Gingerly, Yale wiped her cheeks with a corner of his apron. His smile was so comforting to Nenani that she could feel the last flecks of her night terror dissipating and leaving her with a solid sense of warmth and security. Wordlessly, Yale plucked her up again and settled down against his pillow before placing her on his chest and draping one hand over her shoulders and back, rubbing lightly. He began to sing…

Far away in the blue hill valley

Therein lies a weeping willow tree

Its bark is silver  

and the leaves are golden

But I care for none of these

Don’t cry my darling

For I am here with you

Though you can no longer see me

I’ll be with you

In the blue hill valley

Sleeping with you  

Underneath that weeping willow tree

…………………………………………..

When she woke the next morning, light was spilling through the open curtain to the barracks and she was confused to find that she was all alone. All around her, the other bunks were empty with clear evidence that they had been slept in, but no giants. She found it very odd that she had not been awoken with the rest of them, but as she thought about it further, she decided not to question it and enjoy the relative quiet and comfortable place on Yale’s pillow. However, just as she was drifting back to sleep, the light from the kitchens flickered and she opened her eyes to see Farris standing next to the bed, looking down at her with an amused smirk.  

“Enjoy yer pitty sleep, Dumplin’?” he asked. She stretched and tried to bury herself further into plush bedding while making an incoherent mewling sound that translated roughly to ‘I still wanna sleep’. Farris laughed and slapped the wooden support of the bunk above. “Yer burnin’ the mornin’ away, lass. C’mon, up with ya. Yer with me today.”  

She mumbled something in reply, but her words muffled by the pillow.  

“Well, suit yerself,” Farris replied, walking back through the curtains and yelling back to her, “Ya just wont be gettin’ any breakfast then.”  

Nenani pushed herself upright, strands of wild frizzled hair draping over her face and she hollered back. “No! Wait! I want breakfast!”

Nenani rolled down the pillow and hastily clambered down the side of the bunk and stopped just outside the barracks entryway where Farris’s boots blocked her path. He looked down at her expectantly and raised an eyebrow. “Yer lookin’ a lil’ bushy there, lil’un.”

Nenani ran her hands over her head and tried to brush down her wild hair. She had not braided it the day before as she normally did to keep it neat as Lolly had shown her, and having slept with it unbound had left her with quite a mane. Farris watched her try to tame her hair for a moment before shaking his head and bending down, crooking his finger at her and trying not to laugh. “C’mon, lass. Ya can try and manage that thing over yer porridge.”

Farris sat her on the long table with a small helping of porridge and handed a note off to a footman before disappearing into the spice pantry. Kol and Quinn were in the throws of the last big push for the morning’s baking and had no time for morning greetings as servants and footmen flooded in to collect their offerings onto trays and into baskets for the upstairs tables. Herit was on pit duty and still wore his torn shirt, now repaired, but not very well.  

“Feeling better?” he asked, smiling at her despite the arduousness of his task.

“Yeah, a lot,” she replied, flushing a little in embarrassment. “It was just a nightmare. Sorry for screaming...”

“I had real bad nightmare once,” Herit told her. “I dreamed that m’ old Gran visited me here and she started yelling at me fer not puttin’ enough sultanas in the scones like she’d taught me,” he said. “Then she turned into Farris, but still had on Gran’s frock and I ended up brunin’ the scones.”  

Nenani snorted into her porridge, which Herit deemed a victory, but his smug grin dropped as soon as Farris exited the spice pantry. The spice master pinned the younger Vhasshalan with a warning eye. “I don’t wanna be hearin’ nothin’ about me wearin’ yer Nan’s frock again, Herit.”

“Aye, boss.”

“Good lad. Keep that spit going now, no slackin’. It’ll put some strength into them beans ya call arms.”  

Red in the face with both embarrassment and exertion, Herit turned his attention back to turning the iron handle of the spit. A fat boar, just barely showing any color, rotated slowly over the fire. Nenani ate her breakfast, watching the comings and goings of the kitchen in full swing. When no one was looking, Kol ran over and slipped her a piece of sweet roll and then gave the remaining portion to Herit, who gratefully stuffed it into his mouth. When Farris walked back into the main kitchen, the young giant hurriedly began to turn the spit faster to make it appear that nothing was amiss while trying to quickly chew and swallow.  

Farris had began to organized a selection of various cloth covered pots and small satchels filled with herbs, placing the lot of them in a basket. Once satisfied,  he set a kettle onto to the fire and then took a moment to check the rotating boar. He hummed disapprovingly and turned his head to bark at Herit that he was turning too fast.  

“Yer gonna drop dead at that pace,” he warned. “Steady, boy.”

“Avery makes this look so easy...” Herit grunted, wincing as he went. “No wonder he’s built like a bull.”  

“Let that be a lesson to put ya off from fightin’ in my kitchen,” Farris laughed. “Think about yer sore arms next time ya get the urge to throw a punch.”

“What’s this about fighting?” Nenani’s head turned at hearing the familiar female voice and she smiled brightly as Lolly stepped down from the servants stairway and into the kitchen.  

“Nothing, lass,” Farris assured her. “The tenderfoots got into it last night. Gjerk’s got a busted lip, but that’d be the worst of it.”  

Lolly looked Herit up and down with a critical eye. She did not seem impressed. “Brawling at your age? Really. Your mother would swat you.”

“Already did it fer her,” Farris quipped proudly. “Pit duty fer that one today, then Gjerk’s turn tomorrow. A few hours turnin’ a boar will do the trick nicely.”  

“I suppose it would,” Lolly said approvingly before turning her attention to Nenani who was standing near the edge of the table. She crouched down, smiling brightly and gently took each of Nenani’s hands in hers, playfully swinging them to and fro. “But I’ve come to check on this one. How are you, my darling?”

“I’m doing good,” Nenani said. She had not seen Lolly very much at all since first arriving in Vhasshal as her duties kept her very busy and it made her that much happier to see her again. Lolly and the other lady servants had been so charitable to her and she had never forgotten that kindness. Lolly laughed lightly, turning her attention to Nenani’s wild mane of unkempt hair. “What are we going to do with all this? Haven’t you been keeping it tied up like I taught you?”  

“I have, I promise,” she assured Lolly. “But I didn’t yesterday. I...forgot.”  

“She had quite th’adventure yesterday,” Farris added. “Suppose ya heard all about the Ibronian.”

“Creag?” Lolly asked, saying his name almost like a curse. She scowled at the mentioning of it as though it left a sour and unpleasant taste in her mouth. “Yes, I am regretfully very familiar with his person.”

“S’ya hear about him tyrin’ t’kill Jae, then?”

“I did,” Lolly said, looking genuinely concerned. A stark contrast to how Nenani recalled the last time she had spoken about the King’s ward. “He isn’t hurt is he?”

“Nah, the brat’s still in one piece,” Farris assured her. He jerked his head down in gesture towards Nenani. “That one was with ‘im when the Ibrinoan went after ‘im though.”  

Lolly’s eyes grew wide.  

“What? No!” Lolly turned her attention back to Nenani, seeming to be searching for some evidence of injury or trauma. “He didn’t hurt you, did he? Ah! That bastard, I could skin him.”

“Oh, ho-ho!” Farris laughed, eyes bright with mirth at Lolly’s verbal slippage.  “Language, lass!”

“Oh, shut it, Farris. I’m sure she’s heard far worse down here with you lot.”

“Oh, aye,” he agreed. “That she has. But narry ya worry. He wasn’t interested in that one anyway. They’re both fine and unharmed. Rattled a bit maybe, but nothing more. Did manage to lose her marker though.”

“Oh, did she,” Nenani felt her face flush as Lolly hummed thoughtfully, scanning her over with a critical eye. “Well, I see you’ve gotten her a new one.”  

“Keral found her wanderin’ the halls alone,” Farris explained as he retold the story of the prior day’s escapades. He seemed to have been able to find the humor in it and didn’t seem to be at all angry and she was very grateful for that. “And ya know how he gets with ‘em.”

“Oh, you haven’t any standing this that defense,” Lolly reprimanded. “You’re just as terrible. You all had this one absolutely petrified. Took us over an hour to convince her she was safe and no one was actually going to eat her.”

Farris just shrugged noncommittally. He was not denying the accusation.  

“Best way to keep wayward humans from wandering onto the grounds is t’make ‘em too scared to even try,” he said. “’Course that was before I decided I’d keep her. Then she caught the reap.”  

Lolly’s eyes turned sad for a moment and she nodded knowingly.

“So it’s true then?” he asked her suddenly, bringing the topic back to Creag. “He’s bein’ sent off?”

“Yes,” she said. “He was escorted to the border this morning.”

“Suppose the Queen’s not too happy about that.”

“It was her idea,” Lolly replied. “His majesty was going to have him serve a small sentence and return back to her service, but she recommended that he be sent back home.”  

“Really? Well, I find that shockin’.”

“I know what people have been saying about her. And while I don’t think she has not been deserving of some of it, Queen Rosanna is making an effort to conform to our ways.”  

“The humans ya mean.”

“Yes. She’s been very receptive to my and the other ladies advice when we speak of their virtues. The war is over. These people are broken and lost and mean no harm to us. I think we finally began to get through to her and I believe that might have been what angered Creag into action.”

“That’s why he went after Jae? ‘Cause he was pissed his mistress might be changin’ her tune?”

“I don’t know this for a fact,” Lolly replied. “But the day before yesterday was when I suggested she try and make amends with Jae or at the very least allow him to properly apologize for his behavior. As a good faith gesture to the King at the very least. His majesty has been worried that Jae hasn’t come to see him in so long. Since the wedding, I believe. She must have noticed her new husband was not happy about that. And then yesterday Creag did what he did. And now here we are speaking of it.”

Farris leaned against wall, humming contemplatively. “Hm.”

“I was actually hoping to speak with Jae,” Lolly said, craning her head looking about the room. “He is here is he not?”

“Aye,” Farris replied with a nod. “King’s orders were to keep ‘im down here till he collected the brat himself. Bart’s puttin’ ‘im to some weed pullin’ out in the yard. Gotta keep them little hands busy or they’ll find their own trouble.”  

“Ah, good. I will go to him later,” she said, running her fingers over the brush of Nenani’s hair. “For now, though, I think I need to fix this one’s hair before she starts attracting birds.”

“Attracting birds?” Nenani asked bewildered. Farris grinned at them both.  

“She’s sayin’ birds might wanna start buildin’ their nests in yer hair,” he chuckled. “If they haven’t already.”

Nenani opened her mouth to protest, but could not come up with an adequate response.  

“Hm,” Lolly mused, again studying the whole of Nenani’s person. “Maybe a bath first and a change of clothes. Farris, could I trouble you for-”

“Already ahead of ya, lass,” Farris replied, pulling the boiling kettle from the fire and setting it down atop a wooden trivet. “I’ve got a basin ready in the pantry and her spare clothes are in the chest on the shelf just there.”

Lolly nodded approvingly. She gathered Nenani up and tucked her into the crook of one arm and reached for the kettle with her free hand. “If I didn’t know any better, Farris, I’d say you’re starting to become quite good at this.”

“Ain’t nothing to knowin’ when someone needs a bath, lass,” he laughed.  

“I do not stink!” Nenani snapped, incredulous.  

Farris did not reply and Herit just laughed.  

…………………………………….

She had forgotten how nice a hot bath felt, especially as the weather was increasingly cold and rainy. The basin was quite large and its normally use was for pealing giant rhotas, which were just very large potatoes. So she had plenty of room to splash about and Lolly even indulged her and allowed her a few minutes of free play before getting down to the business of actually washing. Her hair, as Lolly warned her, was a beast to get washed and untangled. But at last, Lolly exited the spice pantry with a clean and brushed Nenani. Hair neatly plaited and tied.  

“I’ll talk with the girls about making you some more clothes,” she muttered as she rummaged through the small chest of clothes, all of which had been made by her and her fellow lady servants. “You’ll be growing out of these ones in no time. And a scarf too, I think. And some boots, as well. These slippers are starting to wear awfully thin and – oh! Jae there you are! I had hoped to...why are you all wet?”

Jae had wordlessly entered the kitchens, red faced and fuming. And completely soaked from his head to his toes. Out in the courtyard, Bart was hysterically laughing. Upon hearing Lolly, both Quinn and Kol glanced over and upon seeing the boy’s sorry state, they too let lose a bout of hearty laughter.  

“Yer lookin’ like a drowned rat!”

“Fuck off,” Jae growled.  

“What happened?” Nenani asked.  

“The gutter was clogged,” he growled, not really looking anyone in the face. “I unclogged it.”

“Are you alright?” she asked.  

“No,” Jae replied. “Not really...”

Jae leaped easily down the few steps and into the kitchen proper and made a bee line towards the hearth, ostensibly to warm himself up. Lolly stopped him, blocking his path with her foot.  

“You need to change out of those clothes, young man. You’ll catch sick.”

“Fantastic,” Jae replied flatly, glaring up at the large woman. “But it doesn’t matter anyway since I haven’t any spare clothes.”

“You have plenty in your room,” Lolly replied, returning his glare. “You remember, don’t you? Your room? The one you haven’t even seen in weeks?”

“Well I can’t get to them now,” Jae snapped, raising his voice and becoming visibly agitated. “Warren says I can’t leave till he says so. So here I’m staying. In wet clothes. Because fuck it!”

“Don’t take that tone with me, son,” Lolly shook her head disapprovingly. “What has gotten into you of late? You disappear for weeks at a time and when you do show up you’re in the Library and you don’t speak to anyone-”

“You mean I don’t speak to you,” he spat.  

“Or the King,” Lolly spat back. “Do you have any idea just how worried he’s been?”

“Obviously not enough to actually come and find me!” Jae yelled angrily, his voice breaking. “You tell me that I’m wrong for not going to him? Why did he never come to check to see if I was okay? Because I’m the joke. Oh let’s have a big laugh at Jae! Fucking idiot can’t do anything right. It’s so funny how he got drunk and spilled gravy on the Queen! So embarrassing for him. Let’s laugh at the poor fucking orphan boy who can’t even sleep in his own damn room anymore because some boulder headed lunatic thinks I’m somehow going to kill Vhasshalan’s unborn heir. Isn’t that fucking hilarious!”

No one was laughing anymore and Herit’s winding of the spit had slowed almost to a stop. Both Quinn and Kol were frozen and staring, bowls of dough stopped mid-knead. From the outside courtyard, Yale and Avery poked their heads inside, curious at the commotion.  

“Jae,” Lolly said softly, her words painted with faint concern. “None of that is true...”

“You wanna know why I spend so much time up in the tower with Barnaby and Maevis?” he asked, breathless with emotion and anger and pain. “BECAUSE THEY DON’T MAKE ME FEEL LIKE I’ A FUCKING IDIOT!”

“Alright,” Farris snapped, appearing from behind Lolly. He glowered down at the human boy and reached down to sweep Jae up in his two calloused hands, not very gently either. “That’s enough of yer bellyaching, ya lil’shit.”

Jae was not happy at all as he was lifted off of the ground and he struggled violently, tears blurring his vision. “Farris, I swear to the fucking Gods if you don’t put me down right now-!”  

Farris deftly grasped the boy’s face between his fingers, forcing him to maintain eye contact. “You’ll be quiet is what yer gonna be, boy. Do you understand me?”

Jae’s breathed hard through his nose, nostrils flaring. He glared into the kitchen master’s face, but did not say anything. Farris brought his face closer to Jae’s and lowered his voice in warning. “I said...do you understand?”

Jae jerked his head in something akin to a nod. Satisfied, Farris tucked Jae under one arm and turned to Lolly. “We don’t have anything fer ‘im to change into. Ya mind fetchin’ him something, lass?”  

Lolly looked as though she wanted to say something, but stopped herself. She spared one sad glance towards Jae before nodding to Farris. “I can do that. I won’t be long.”

As Lolly turned to rush up the servants entrance stair well, Farris turned and disappeared into the spice pantry and closed the door behind him.

………………………….

Nenani sat quietly on the table, staring at the green door and worried. Since she first met Jae, she had sensed a sadness about him, hidden under his jokes and laughter. And it made her incredibly sad to know her friend had been hurting and not once had she tried to help him.

She was a terrible friend and it made her feel wretched.  

“Cheer up, Dumplin’,” Yale told her as he took an empty seat near her. “Jae will be fine.”

“He was really sad,” Nenani answered back without looking away from the green door. Her dejected and sad frown gave Yale pause, and he reached out nudged her shoulder. When she turned her doleful eyes to him, he sighed.  

“Remember what I told ya last night?” he asked her. She nodded. “Well, he’s going through that hurt too. Best thing ya can do fer ‘im to keep being his friend, eh? He thinks just ‘cause we give ‘im a hard time means we ain’t ‘is friends, but it ain’t true. Don’t gotta be ‘round here long before ya realize we haze all the tenderfoots. He’s just growin’ up and confused. Old enough to know some things and too young to know anything else. He ain’t the same lil’ urchin the King dragged back from the moors all them years ago. When ya get t’be around his age you’ll understand. The time between being a kid and becoming an adult is really hard and confusing.”

“...will I be that angry?” she asked, not entirely following.  

“I’m ain’t no prophet,” Yale shrugged. “But maybe. Ya both have a lot in common, losing yer folks young. That pain can make ya real angry if ya don’t know what t’do with it.”

She did not find that to be much consolation, but she nodded anyway. Lolly returned a little over twenty minutes later with a small bundle and without any greetings to the others, she went straight for the green door and knocked lightly.  

“It’s me, Farris,” she said. “I have his clothes.”  

The door opened a crack and there were some words exchanged that were too quiet for anyone else to hear. Finally, Lolly nodded and turned back towards the stairway as the green door closed shut once more.  

Yale’s attempt at distraction was to have Nenani name all the herbs and vegetables as he went about his work prepping for the afternoon luncheon. Avery made himself a nuisance of himself by walking near their work table every so often and try to convince her that she was mispronouncing the names.  

“It’s not pars-lee, lass. It’s pear-shly.”

“No it’s not,” she said as he walked away. “Pars-lee.”

“Pear-shly!” he yelled back with a cheeky grin.  

He would repeat the exercise whenever he walked by and over the course of a half hour, its scope extended beyond just the items that they were working with to any random fruit, herb, or vegetable. Yale was no help and allowed the torment, finding it too amusing.  

“Tay-mat-a,” Avery quipped as he walked by with a basket of venison heads to be boiled down, heading out into the courtyard.    

“Tomato!” Nenani yelled back at him.  

Avery poked his head back inside and answered back, “Poy-ta-ta!”

“POTATO!”  

From her vantage point, she could just see Avery’s back as he turned towards the courtyard, but he stopped and turned completely around, hurrying back into the kitchen. He plopped his basket of deer heads onto a counter and peeked back through the archway.  

Yale stared at his fellow cook bewildered. “What’s all this?”

“The King’s in the courtyard,” Avery replied in a hushed whisper.  

Yale started. “What now?”

“The King!” Avery turned to look at Yale with fervent eyes, a mixture of excitement and confusion. “He’s in the yard right now!”

Yale was immediately on his feet and rushed to the archway, peeking out curiously. Nenani saw every muscle in the black haired giant’s body stiffen.  

“Oh, fuck. He is.”

“I wasn’t lying!” Avery protested, still in a hushed whisper.  

“Well so much’a what comes outta yer gob is rubbish,” Yale countered. “I had t’make sure.”

“Ah, go fuck yerself, Yale.”

“Not in front of the King, I ain’t!”  

Avery looked like he wanted stay mad, but his scowl broke and he snickered. Something outside caught both their attentions and they scrambled away from the doorway and stood stiffly to the side. A Vhasshalan guard, dressed in the same type of boiled leather armor as captain Rheil, walked through. He scanned the kitchen, eyes falling to all persons inside.  

“Over here please, gentleman,” he said to Avery and Yale, gesturing with a jerk of his head for them to stand off to the side and away from the door. Both cooks moved with alacrity and stood straight and stiff. He pointed to Herit. “You, over here too.”

Herit looked panicked. “B-but...but I can’t stop spinning the spit sir, it’ll burn!”

“I’m not going to repeat myself, lad.”

Poor Herit was shaking, looking between the guard and the green door and knowing very well what Farris would have to say of he saw Herit walk away from pit duty. Guard's orders or none. With extreme reluctance, Herit stepped away and moved to stand next to Avery and Yale. The guard spotted Nenani on the table and did a double take, blinking. “Ah...uh, y-you’re fine there, human.”

“Oh...okay,” she replied awkwardly. There wasn’t many places she would have been able to go in any case. She couldn’t climb table legs like Jae.  

“William, please,” said King Warren as he stepped into the kitchen. The air seemed thinner suddenly as everyone seemed to breath in all at once. He was much as Nenani remembered him, but he was dressed more formally than she had ever seen and his hair had actually been pulled back into a plait. “These men have plenty to do without us interrupting them. Please, continue as you were. I don’t wish to distract you from your duties.”  

The King nodded to each of the kitchen staff present and he eyes fell to Nenani and he smiled warmly. “I’m glad to see you’re doing well, little ma’am. I do hope these fine fellows have been taking good care of you.”

All of a sudden, Nenani lost all sense of what she should be doing with her hands and her face felt hot. She nodded.  

“A-are you here to see Jae?” She asked, hoping she wasn’t stepping out of line. She suddenly realized she had not curtsied. Did she need to curtsy? How did one curtsy again?

“I am,” he replied with no inflection of irritation. “I’ve come to collect him, actually.”  

There was a part of her that was aware that she was being impertinent and she really just should remain silent, but she decided it was worth the risk. “He’s been really sad. But he won’t say it. And he’s really angry too, because he’s hurting. I think...I think he misses how things were before the wedding. Uh, your majesty.”  

She bobbed awkwardly in a pathetic attempt at a curtsy. Her heart thrummed alarmingly in her chest, hoping she had not insulted the King or spoke out of turn. But the King did not look angry at all. He looked sad in the same way she had seen Jae look sad.  

“Thank you,” he told her, voice gentle and he sounded sincere. “Thank you for taking care of him. He is very dear to me.”  

“You should tell him,” she said. “It would mean more if you told him.”

The King nodded thankfully before turning his attention to the green door. As though sensing, his Majesty’s presence, Farris pushed the door open and stepped through. He bent down in a shallow bow to King Warren. No words were spoken as the King walked to the door, giving Farris a nod before entering. Farris closed the door behind the monarch and stepped aside as the guard took post in front. The kitchen master gave the guard a once over and snorted as he moved away. A glance to his left and upon seeing the boar over the fire standing still, jerked his head towards Herit who was decidedly NOT at the hearth.  

“GET YER ARSE BACK ON THAT SPIT!”  

Herit leaped back to his place and began to spin in earnest, sweating and panicked. “S-sorry!”

Farris loomed over poor Herit, laying into him, but Nenani’s attention was drawn away as she was suddenly swept up and carried out through the archway.  

“W-what?” Nenani looked up to see Avery’s face. He grinned down at her.  

“Got a job fer ya, Dumplin’,” he told her.  

“What job?” she asked, frowning with suspicion. He walked along the side of the wall to a small window set near the ground. It was the window that looked into the spice pantry. He sat her down carefully and stepped back. She looked at him confused. “What?”

“See what the King’s sayin’,” he whispered. “Yer small enough no one’s gonna notice ya.”

“I-I don’t wanna get in trouble!” She replied, matching his hushed whisper.  

“Ya wont!” he assured her before slipping back inside the kitchens.  

She stared incredulously at the spot where Avery had been and then looked around the courtyard to find it quite empty. Bart and Gjerk were no where to be seen and neither was anyone else. Her ears prickled as she picked up the faint sound of the King’s voice and she turned to the window. It was dirty and obscured by weeds. Careful and trying not to make a sounds, she knelt down near the edge of the window and listened.  

“Are you going to speak to me at all?” the King asked.  

She wiped some of the dirt from the window and through it, she could see Jae sitting next to the basin, his hair wet, but now dressed in dry clothing. His eyes were red as though he had been crying.  

“Jae, I know you’ve been avoiding me these last weeks. But this silence is not helping. I cannot fix if I do not know what is wrong.”

“I just want to be left alone,” Jae replied, his voice raw. “I know your busy.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t make time for you. Gods above, I rely on you to give me an excuse not to have to speak with Lord Eldherst. I’ve had to sit through seventeen meetings with that old fart. He is convinced that the south moor would be the perfect spot to erect the new armory.”  

Jae’s morose face cracked a smile. “Heh. Serves you right.”  

The King seemed to take heart in his ward’s small smile. “Please tell me what you want of me.”  

Jae’s smile faded and he looked down at his feet, pained. “I don’t need anything from you that you’ve not already given me. I know...I know I’ve been a brat. I haven’t exactly made this marriage thing easy for you and I’m sorry for what happened at the wedding. I thought it would be easier for me to just...not be around while you and the Queen...y’know. Got to know each other?”  

The King looked tired and as Jae spoke, he seemed to wilt. “Rosanna does not hate you, Jae, if that what you fear. She wants a chance to apologize to you properly.”  

“Why? What does she have to apologize for?”

“For driving you away. From me.” Jae had spent most of the conversation staring at his feet, but upon hearing that, he looked up. “You are very dear to me, Jae. I owe you so much that I could never put into words and will be in debt to you for the rest of my life.”

“You don’t owe me anything Warren,” Jae snapped. “I was gonna die out there if you hadn’t found me. You took me in, clothed and fed me, you even taught me to read! I don’t want to be a burden or to get in the way. I don’t feel like there’s a place for me here anymore. So, it’s just easier this way.”

The King crouched down so as to be eye level with the human. “Why would you ever think you’re in the way?”

“You’re gonna have a kid soon,” Jae replied, scrubbing fiercely at his leaking eyes. “There isn’t a place for me by your side anymore. I...I k-know I’m not...I’m not your son, so...”

Jae’s words broke and he shook with real effort to hold back his emotions. King Warren looked awestruck and horrified. Then without a word, he reached out his arms and wrapped them around Jae, drawing the sobbing youth into him and tucking him into the crook of his shoulder.    

“What would make you ever believe that?” the King demanded. “Of course you are my son. From the moment we left those moors, I took on that mantle and I will never betray that vow. You are my son, Jae. And I love you dearly.”  

Jae’s eyes were wide and he shook as he began to cry and hiccup. His face disappeared as he buried it into the King’s shoulder.    

“Of course you are, you daft boy!” the king answered, though Nenani did not hear the question. She felt her cheeks and there were wet. But she was not sad. She felt happy and relieved and looked down at the King of Vhasshal, an imposing giant with the power of an entire kingdom behind him. And there was Jae. A human. Small and penniless. And she felt so happy for them.

The back of her shirt was abruptly yanked upwards and she was swept up from her spot on the ground and lifted high into the air. A warn calloused hand wrapped around her middle and she found herself the focus of a very unamused Farris. “Just what in seven hells d’ya think yer doin’?”

“Nothing...” she replied meekly.  

“Nothing,” he echoed back, clearly seeing through her. “’Nothing’ she says. First yer caught stealin’ from th’ King and now I catch ya spyin’ on ‘im? Yer sure determined to see them dungeons, ain’t ya, Dumplin’?”

“No!” she said, worried now. “I didn’t...I wasn’t! It...it was Avery’s idea!”

Farris covered her with his hand, muffling her cries of protest and shook his head with a long suffering sigh. “Yer hopeless, lass. Right ‘n properly hopeless.”

[thefinalexperiment]

The Final Experiment Chapter 27: Unexpected Catastrophes

Peter Parker x OC

A/N: I just thought I'd mention that in this chapter, instead of relying on good ol' Google translate, I decided just to write sentences that are being said in another language in italics. So that's what that one line means, in case it could come across confusing. Enjoy!

I will no longer be linking things on new part posts due to dumblr and the link censoring, and just to be safe from any potential image post censoring, I will also not be including covers on my stories. All previous parts can be found in my masterlist, in my bio!

Warnings: This part contains a brief description of blood, a monster fight, and imminent danger to the characters

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        I felt off. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was the possibility of finding out what happened in my past. Maybe there was something I had missed. I kept a careful eye out as Nat and I headed back to the jet to meet the others.

        Just then, shouts and shots rang out over the comms. I couldn’t tell who was doing what, but something was out there.

        “Come on!” Natasha called to me, taking off running. We headed towards the place where we had last seen the rest of the team.

        I heard Steve giving orders, and the others responding. The others… except for Bucky. I couldn’t stop myself from calling out to him.

        “Bucky, are you okay?”

        The others said nothing, simply continuing to fight off whatever it was.

        “James!” I shouted. “Answer me!”

        Nothing.

        “Dad, tell me you’re alright!” I begged in Russian, not even noticing my slip.

        “I see him!” Peter said suddenly. “The creature grabbed him, it’s taking him away!”

        “We’ve almost got this thing down,” Tony called, “But you’d better get down here, Barnes, we need those icy hands of yours. Romanoff, go radio ahead for medical. Our Soldier’s not looking too good.”

        It didn’t even register that he had called me Barnes. I wouldn’t notice until long after we got back to the tower. For now, all I cared about was stopping this thing. Nat nodded to me, then took off for the jet. I ran for the room where the others were. When I arrived, the dim emergency lights were flickering on and off, making it difficult to see exactly what we were fighting against. The ceiling had to have been at least 60 feet high, but this creature seemed to more than fill the space, from what I could make out. All I could tell from the violently writhing shadows and flashes of gunfire was that this thing definitely wasn’t human, probably not even from earth, unless it had been created by HYDRA’s scientists. Which, considering my own little parasite pal, I couldn’t discount that as a possibility.

        “Kait!”

        I jumped and raised my gun, but it was just Peter.

        “Whoa, easy there…” he said.

        “Where’s Bucky?” I demanded.

        “That monster thing's got him hidden somewhere, we can’t get him until we can get past it.” He paused to shoot a web, pinning a slimy appendage to the wall just before it could lash out at Sam.

        “I thought Tony said you almost had it?” I asked.

        “We did!” I heard Tony say, firing his repulsors. “But it seems to have gotten a second wind. The thing just won’t die!”

        I nodded resolutely.

        “Okay. Just leave it to me. Peter, can your webs hold part of it still long enough for me to get close?”

        “You got it!” he said, backflipping away to try to draw its attention.

        “Can somebody give me a lift once he’s pinned it?” I asked. Just as I finished speaking, Peter began to web up a long, tentacle-looking thing. What was this, the Kraken?  The Watcher Out of the Water? The thing struggled against Peter’s handiwork, and the threads began to fray and snap.

        “Better hurry up, Kait, I dunno how long I can hold it!”

        “Buckle up, Frosty,” I heard Sam say, “This won’t be an easy ride.”

        I reached my hand out, and Sam grabbed ahold of me. My new gloves (nanotech, courtesy of Tony) were designed not to slip, but I still had an instinct to hang on as tight as I could, just in case.

        “You’re gonna have to toss me,” I called to Sam. The part of the monster that Peter had managed to string up was pretty high up on the wall.

        “What if you miss?”

        “I’m not gonna miss. And you better not either.”

        “If you say so… Here we go!”

        Using the momentum of his wings, Sam zoomed towards the creature’s trapped appendage, then swung me with as much power as he could. As I arced through the air, I let the nanotech on my gloves recede. I grabbed ahold of the weird tentacle thing with my bare hands (ick, by the way), and hung on for dear life, waiting for my killing touch to spread out and take the creature down.

        But nothing happened.

        “Uh, guys? We have a problem here.”

        The creature roared angrily and tore its appendage away from the wall, taking me with it.

        “Kaitlynn, what’s going on?” Tony called.

        I couldn’t exactly answer at the moment.

        “Tony, try to bring the power back on!” Steve ordered.

        “On it, Cap.”

        The monster, evidently tired of me hitching a ride, slammed its tentacle down onto the ground. Luckily, I landed on top of it. It still hurt, but I didn’t get crushed.

        “Kait, are you okay?” Peter asked over the comms.

        “Ow…” I groaned. “I’m alive… but that didn’t work. It was immune to me. Thor, does this thing seem like something from Jotunheim?”

        “If it is, it must have been tampered with by HYDRA,” he replied. “I’ve never seen a creature such as this.”

        “We need a new strategy…” Steve said. “Tony, how are the lights coming?”

        “Hang on, almost there…”

        And just like that, the compound’s room lit up. The creature came into full view. It… well, Watcher in the Water wasn’t a far off comparison. It was sort of like the legend of the Kraken, but mixed with the body of a Jurassic Park-style T-Rex. Man, HYDRA made some weird stuff… It’s skin was pink and raw, like an exposed muscle. Absolutely disgusting. What, were they trying to create the Blob?

        “O…kay… What’s the plan here, Cap?” Clint said.

        Just then, I spotted Bucky, pinned under one of the creature’s tentacles. He was covered in blood… I could only hope he’d be okay.

        “I’m gonna grab Bucky.” A cacophony of voices urged me not to, but I protested, “I can’t just leave him! Let me get him out, then we can evacuate and blow this place. Come on… Steve? Tony?”

        There was a pause, then Tony sighed.

        “Go on, kid. We’ll distract it. Right, Cap?”

        “…Right. Be careful, Kaitlynn. Pietro, now that we have a clear visual, get in there with Kait, try to get her close, and help her get Bucky out. Wanda, clear the way for them. Hulk, Clint, Sam, Thor, Tony, we’ll try to draw its attention. Parker, web up as much of it as you can.”

        Pietro appeared beside me at Steve’s order.

        “Ready?” he asked. I nodded, letting the nanotech on my gloves reform for now.

        “Let’s go.”

        He scooped me up in his arms, and the next thing I knew, we were standing in front of Bucky.

        “We have to get this thing off of him,” I said.

        “It looks like it weighs five tons,” Pietro said, shoving at the tentacle pinning Bucky down. “Wanda, any help?”

        “A little busy here, Piet,” she replied, “Give me a moment.”

        “We don’t have a moment,” I said, watching as the creature turned its attention to us.

        It roared, and lashed out at us with another appendage. With the rest of the team busy holding off the rest of it, Pietro and I couldn’t do anything, and he knew I wouldn’t leave Bucky to be crushed. He wouldn’t either. Pietro grabbed me, and pulled the both of us to crouch beside Bucky, hoping that somehow, we could avoid the creature’s wrath. I threw my hands up, bracing for the impact… but it never came. Instead, the creature groaned in pain.

        “What…?”

        “Uh… Kait?” came Peter’s voice, “When did you learn to do that?”

        Pietro and I looked up. Spikes of ice stuck up from the ground all around, forming a palisade around us. The creature had impaled its tentacle on the sharp icicles that I had apparently summoned. There were even some shards of ice embedded in it like shrapnel, as if I had somehow thrown ice at it. This was definitely new.

        “That’s new,” Pietro said.

        “Yeah…" I said numbly, "It is…”

        The creature screamed angrily and pulled away from us, even moving the tentacle that had been pinning Bucky. Pietro grabbed the both of us and zipped us away, back to the rest of the team.

        “Alright, let’s get out of here, everyone,” Steve said. “Wanda, come on, let’s go!”

        Everyone quickly evacuated. Pietro sped on ahead to hand Bucky over to the arriving medical team. Tony closed the big stone doors behind us, and we all boarded the jet.

        “Alright, we got a team on the way to take this place down,” Nat said. “Fury won’t be happy we’re losing the chance to explore this place, but I think I speak for us all when I say I don’t really care…”

        “We got the flashdrive,” I muttered, slumping into a seat. “That’s what was important…”

        Still, I couldn’t help but think it might have been handy to be able to study a creature that was immune to my icy “death-touch”.

        Backup arrived, and the medics joined us to take care of Bucky. The rest of their air carriers hovered nearby. As our Quinjet took off and began to fly away, they began to fire. The team watched in silence as the base went up like Independence Day. It was pretty satisfying to watch… but in the back of our minds, we were all too focused on whether or not Bucky was going to be okay.

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A/N: I'll be honest, I have no idea where this came from lol. It just sort of wrote itself. Dun dun dun... drama... Will Bucky be okay? Will the creature actually die in the bombing? What of Kait's new powers? Leave your theories in the comments and tune in next time for (some) answers to these burning questions!

Series Tags: @shamvictoria11 @mla02 @fanficcrapforme @goodbyefornow123 @thebookisbtr @what-inspirational-name

Everything Tags: @coconutknees @hollymac79