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saltymongoose · 2 years ago

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Lovebug is back!

Size difference is the big idea!A Player who actually likes being smaller than almost everyone in Nevada and uses it to their advantage! What if the player used their smaller, non-threatening-ish appearance to pull enemies into a state of confusion before letting their boys go to town? That was the idea originally. But, then I thought it would also be fun to just have a player who loves being surrounded by powerful people (there is a sprinkle of liking to be intimidated in there as well).

Sure, they may be the most powerful being in Nevada, but if they weren't, most of the people they came across could snap them like a twig. And having their grunts constantly surrounding them is like a dream come true! It makes them feel protected and safe.

(If one of their vessels ever does the lean against the wall thing next to them, they'll pass out.)

Size difference is so much fun to dabble with!

Do you have any favorite size difference headcanons?

I'm sorry if this is long, it's not really an ask. But you write so well! It never ceases to amaze me! You make all of your posts so detailed and I love hearing your opinion on these!

Thank you for all that you do! You're a gift to the fandom!

~Lovebug Anon

Hey there Lovebug Anon <3, it's about time I get around to answering your wonderful prompts. This is a very, very late response (I believe this ask was originally sent around April ((⊙_⊙')) to give everyone an idea), so I sincerely apologize. That being said, thank you for the compliments in this ask, I appreciate your kind words more than you could know. :') ❤️

[SAM:PN] General Height Difference Headcanons ft. Hank, Deimos, Sanford, & 2BDamned

(TW: Yandere, Obsessive Behavior. This is pretty fluffy.)

It was clear to you from the moment you first met that the height difference between you and your vessels was staggering. They towered over you, no matter how short they would be considered by grunt standards. To their enemies, it only served to make them more intimidating (especially for those like Hank, which were well above the ordinary height typically found in their species).

However, in your eyes, it couldn’t be anything but beneficial. Being as short as you were (compared to them, at least), gave you a clear advantage when it came to being on the battlefield. With your grunts obscuring the view of your enemies, you could rest easy knowing that the likelihood of you actually being targeted when controlling them was very small. Plus, if anyone did see you first, the confusion of being met with such a small form would give your grunts the perfect opportunity to ambush.

Other than this though, there was admittedly some personal enjoyment you took in being surrounded by such tall, powerful people. You couldn't help it; the feeling of absolute comfort and safety you got from being near them and knowing that they wouldn't allow anything bad to happen to you was just unmatched.

Plus, a part of you simply liked how they loomed over you, as odd as it sounded. It's the same one that made you blush when they leaned in close to you, and the one that made your heart quiver in your chest when they wrapped an arm around your body in a casual gesture. They didn't even mean to fluster you when it happened, and truth be told, this made it slightly embarrassing for you. Yet even so, you couldn't stop yourself from reacting this way; you just liked how tall they were compared to you, that is all. (It wasn't exactly a bad thing, anyway.)

Your vessels all have their own thoughts on your height difference though.

Beginning with Hank, he sees height as being a tool for intimidation, and one that’s very easy for him to use specifically. As the tallest of your vessels, he’s aware of the fact that your enemies are more likely to be scared of him just because of how he stands out like this (barring his reputation as Nevada’s most dangerous mass murderer, of course).

Other than this, Hank has very little regard for it. It makes scaring people easier, but it wasn’t something he focused on; such a natural thing that required absolutely no effort from him didn’t deserve such consideration when he was so busy with other, more pressing matters. However, that doesn’t mean he didn’t notice how you reacted to it.

Hank pays more attention to you than anything else, so of course his attention is peaked by the way you blink up at him with soft doe eyes when he leans a bit closer to you, and the flush that appears on your face as his taller form takes up more of your space. He doesn’t know why you act like that at first, and honestly at the moment he doesn’t care to ask that question. Not when he’s too entranced by the way you look, appearing so adorably mystified by his form for whatever reason.

He figures it out soon enough though, and once he does, he grows to appreciate his natural height far more than before. As the tallest, and having the most noticeable height difference with you, it is rather simple for him to elicit these reactions from you, and he finds that he loves doing it.

He’ll try to be around you a lot after that, and as close as he can manage, no matter what the others might think. (Making them jealous was just another bonus for him.) He’ll lean over you and tug you into him, covering your body with his as he purrs and takes in your cute gasps and how your face warms. Instead of simply staying next to you, he’ll be as imposing on your space as is comfortable for you both, seeking to try and accentuate the difference in your height. (Which, again, is very easy. You barely reach his chest, just which makes you more cute in his eyes.)

Another bonus to being the tallest of your vessels is that it makes him the best candidate for your main protector, at least in Hank's view. He's technically the person in the best position to protect you from view and shield you from harm, simply because he's so much bigger than you. If anything, this further proves that he was made to be yours, and to be your only necessary vessel. With how much you seemed to like your height difference, and how he was made better at protecting you because of it (far more than anyone else), it was only common sense.

On the other hand, Deimos likely didn’t notice your reactions to his height at first, but it was purely because he was too busy fawning over how short you are compared to him. He was the last on the list of your vessels in terms of height, and while he certainly wasn’t insecure about it, he was pretty happy to experience what it was like to have someone smaller than him in almost every way. The fact that it was you made it all the more special, though.

Deimos is the first to actually tease you over your height difference, but in a purely joking kind of way. He’ll rest an elbow on your head or quickly put something you need on a higher shelf before you come into the room, just so he can be the first to offer you help. Verbal teases are to be expected as well, mainly asking if you need help reaching something when you clearly don’t, or calling you "shawty" (because he heard you say that word once, and of course he'd repeat it afterward).

Once he actually notices how you react when he leans in close to tell you a joke or give you a side-hug, his teases take another direction. Simple jokes turn become more pointed; instead of just mentioning your height in a joking way, it's the difference between you that he'll seek to exploit - and not for mere humor anymore.

So he'll lean a bit closer than you both know is necessary, rest a bit more of his body on you when he gives you an embrace, and linger like that for longer than what would be normal. In addition to this, he also already knows how much you like his voice too, so he decides to see what’ll happen if he combines these two factors.

It’s honestly kind of overwhelming for you; having him suddenly get into your personal space when you're doing something simple like making yourself a meal, boxing you in with his arms and leaning some of his weight on you. His body heat is almost dizzying, and it certainly doesn't help the rushing pace of your heart when he comes even closer, so you can feel his breath against you when he purrs an innocent question about what you're doing (though it's followed by a petname rasped lowly into your ear).

Perhaps it's playing dirty since he's deliberately using something you can't help liking against you, and honestly, a part of him considers holding back on it. (He loves flustering you like this, but he wouldn't want to overstep and make you uncomfortable instead.) And he would, if you didn't lean back into him when he did it, sometimes even burying your face into his chest to try and hide your blushing face from him (which is just adorable to him). You seem to like these little moments, and of course he does, so why would he stop?

If anything, the fact that he can elicit such reactions with the combination of his height and smooth voice (something that he sees as unique to himself) is just another tool he can use to get you to fall for him. All so that you'll love him and his company just as much as he loves yours.

Sanford is another one who noticed how you get when he’s close, but at first, he didn’t think it was because you liked his height of all things. In all honesty, he probably just thought that the fact that he’s always shirtless is what flusters you so much since nobody else in your group shows off as much skin as he does. Then he takes note of how you react when any of them get into close contact with you and it clicks.

He’s actually above average in height from grunt standards, but it’s not something he pays much attention to. Sure, other prospective partners have mentioned it in the past, but as weird as it sounds, no one's opinion on him has mattered as much as yours does, so he’s honestly very flattered. It makes him pretty bashful too; he knows his musculature makes him stand out more than anything, but having the person he adores fawn over something so minuscule to him must be a good sign for your impending relationship, right?

Getting close to you and showing off his strength through carrying you are things that he does quite a lot, even before figuring out how much you like your height difference. As such, you've just incentivized him to do it more often. After all, if you enjoy having the height difference between you both made to be really noticeable, then there's no reason for him not to.

Sanford also finds the way you look when he does it to be really cute; you appear so small compared to him when you're being held to his body, all cozy and safe in his toned arms. Your face is flushed, and he can feel your breath hitch when he adjusts you in his grip, your fingers flexing from where they're rested on his shoulder and chest.

He worries that he overdoes it sometimes, since you both know that picking you up as much as he does is pretty unnecessary (like those few times he just elected to do it instead of getting something off a shelf for you). You don't mention it though, just content to lean into his embraces with a crooked smile, sighing happily even as your face heats. Sanford hopes the way his heartbeat picks up isn't too noticeable. (It's not like he can care that much though, not when he dares to squeeze you to him a bit tighter and you relax even more in his hold.)

Sanford eventually finds that he also quite likes the difference you have (perhaps even a bit too much, in his mind). You’re usually too flustered to notice, but when you do, it’s impossible to ignore the way scarlet colors his cheeks and dusts his torso when you find yourself in his personal space (even if he's trying to keep his face impassive as usual). It's cute, for someone who's famous for such unsavory things.

The height difference also makes a deeper feeling of protectiveness surge up in him. You might be one of the most powerful beings in Nevada, but you just look so small and fragile compared to grunts. Sanford was already dedicated to defending you at every turn, but this just makes it more important for him in a way (if that were even possible). He wants you to rely on him as your protector, and what better way to do that than showing off his strength and how he can use his more imposing stature for your benefit?

He's always been yours to control; always ready and willing to give anything and everything of himself just for you and your favor, all with the hopes of you returning these deep affections he holds. So why not just use him and him alone?

With 2BDamned, his fascination with your height difference first comes from a purely clinical perspective. He’s been interested in human anatomy since your existence first became known to him, and wants to learn all that he can in regards to anything related to it. (How would he be competent at taking care of you if he didn’t know anything about your species?)

As such, he’ll view it as another opportunity to ask about the differences between you. Are you considered tall or short according to your species’ average? Why are humans so short compared to grunts? Are there any advantages to humans being so small? Questions like these are his main focus, and in addition to this, the fact that humans are so small will also make him more concerned for your well-being when out in the field.

(Sanford, Deimos, and Hank are becoming quite annoyed at how often he checks in through their comms to see if you're alright. What did he think they were, 1337 Agents? Of course you were okay, you had them.)

Considering how he spends less time around you than the others (when you’re not back at the base, that is), he doesn’t have as many opportunities to really look at his own height difference with you. Nor does he take much notice of how you might react to it as a result, which holds off his realization of it.

This changes with the first of his rushed “examinations” on you, after you happened to get a bit scratched up while on a mission with the others. He was standing very close to you, hands darting over your body as he carefully moved your limbs around, checking for bruising and bleeding while harshly lecturing your three main vessels.

Doc first thought the color on your face and the heat that seeped through his gloves when he touched your face was from exertion or pain, a sign of an injury that he might’ve missed. That's until he notices that it only gets worse when he comes closer to inspect you further, inadvertently looming over you as he leans down to get closer to your face. It only hits him when you avert your eyes from him shyly, lips drawing into a small pout as you try to hide the full extent of your blush from him. (It's embarrassing, all he's doing is checking you over for injuries.)

He seemed to pause for a split second when he noticed but quickly got back into ranting towards the others about their "neglect" of you, trying to ignore the way he could feel a smile spreading across his face underneath his mask. So that's why you're so flushed around them.

Doc is very tempted to see how far he can go with it, to view just how you react to the different ways he can show off his height difference with you. But he doesn't. Or rather, he won’t go to the same lengths that others would; he's confident enough in himself, generally speaking, but the uncertainty he feels regarding how to go about bonding with you will hold him back from going all out (as much as he'd like to).

That doesn’t mean that he won’t stand a little bit nearer to you, or stay for a few seconds too long when he needs to lean over you to reach something - perhaps even take a leaf from Deimos' book and say something to you in that smooth voice of his when he's so close - but anything beyond that is unlikely. (Unless driven as a direct reaction to one of the others pulling something, of course).

It's a more subtle build-up with him, but that's how he prefers to show his love to you anyway. The last thing he'd want to do is rush in impulsively and foolishly ruin things between you, especially after that unfortunate first impression he made. Besides, 2BDamned has always been incredibly patient, and you'd be worth an eternity of pining while he decides on what actions to take. So long as he can prove himself good enough to you in the end, worthy of your love and praise, he'd be willing.

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zeta-in-de-walls · 3 years ago

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Back in my Zeta appreciation hours lol. You'll probably be one of the only dsmp (analysis) blogs I'll follow because of how positive you try to be, and I have so much respect for you. I sometimes have the urge to post negative or discourse rambles, but I stop when I realize how shitty it just makes me feel afterwards. So props to you for remaining so positive even when the fandom is on fire hah.

Anyways, I love when Tommy turns off his persona (though don't get me wrong I love streamer mode too) and just talks. For all the screeching he does, he has a nice and calming voice. Podcast type beat shit. I was surprised when he was open about his anxiety and getting therapy. He's generally not a too open or "honest" person about this kind of stuff, at least as far as I can tell (somewhat also why I'm not his real name is Tom or Thomas but I digress).

Also, in general, I think it's nice thing to see content creators being open about their mental struggles and how they deal with that. I think so far, Wilbur, Techno to an extent, Dream, and now Tommy have been open about their mental health (I'm not aware of the rest but if they have, props to them too). I couldn't imagine openly telling hundreds of thousands of people on live that I have some mental issues that I'm dealing with, so I love when they're open about it, especially as a person with really bad anxiety and ADHD and depression and probably some other stuff. (Though it sucks when the fandom also latches on to this and either babies them or uses it as hate fuel. This fandom has a weird track record with mental health and 'holy shit what the fuck' takes to certain plots, cough cough exile arc why is there so much victim blaming and abuse apologism??)

So in the midst of all this, weirdly enough maybe, just coming on and sending asks to you is somewhat calming for me. I could just post this but I think this "one-sided" conversation is fun. This past week has been a shit storm for this fandom and yet we're still here. Gotta find the light in the dark I guess. (Side-note: you're never obligated to post these, as is the general consensus with asks, I just like rambling and speaking positively of you lmao.) Hope you stay well!

Hey, feel free to chat in my askbox anytime. I enjoy the interactions as well! Thanks!

Discourse can seem fun at the time. When drama's happening, people become intensely curious and want to know what's going on even if it doesn't involve them. Then once they've caught up on it, they want to give their own input and perspective on things. It's natural!

But it's ultimately draining. Each individual comment on the situation is small, reasonable. The intentions are good. But sheer quantity is overwhelming. There are misunderstandings and miscommunications and genuine negativity mixed in even if they're not the vast majority at all.

You're handing a glass of water to a man who's beginning to drown. You're reaching out a hand to give but only push them further down.

(Sorry that's based on a song lyric xD, and I couldn't not share it.)

Anyway, the fandom is fun and I do love it! I've read so many great posts, seen so much cool art, read some fun fanfiction, shared some thoughts and received nice interactions. The people trending negativity one day are the same people who trend positivity another day. It's all the same community and we should appreciate that, flaws and all. We're not perfect. We're not better and its pride to think otherwise. And its always been this way - people talk about last year Mcyt like it was better but honestly the drama was always there, it was just smaller, but we only remember the good bits.

Heh all that aside yeah, Tommy's a really cool person. I admire him trying to be open and genuine. He wouldn't talk about it and feel so stressed out if he didn't care. He seems to care a lot about being a responsible person and nurturing a good community while feeling like he's not ready to be a good role model as he's still learning and making mistakes and he's struggling to deal with that pressure. It's very cool that he shared all those concerns. I really enjoyed that stream!

Plus the fact that he's got an awareness of his own limits. He admitted that he's had therapy almost casually, recommending it as a good, useful thing to do which is honestly great. Therapy is rather stigmatised and it's not necessarily something you'd expect from someone who seems so confident. I remember there was some worry about if they'd show Tommy's character going to therapy in the Dream SMP whether he'd actually depict it well and do it justice. But now we know he's had firsthand experience and recommends it. (Obviously that doesn't mean they'd definitely portray it well but is so encouraging to know that Tommy at least takes it very seriously.)

Aah this turned into quite the ramble. xD Cheers again for the ask!

#replies #meta #analysis #fandom discourse #ha and here i am discussing drama like the liar i am xD #yeah i think a bunch of ccs have mentioned therapy #eret's taken breaks for his mental health i believe #niki's discussed anxiety a lot and has plans to become a professional therapist for ccs

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ogamagirl · 4 years ago

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WELL friendos, it looks like it’s gonna be a stressful week. I did a little think last night to de-stress myself, so I figured I’d share it here with y’all as well; maybe it’ll be fun for you to look at too.

It's been a while since I've documented The Plush Hoard, so I went through it this evening!

A few notes before we begin!

-Before the "but where do YOU sleep" comments come in - I move them around when I sleep lol. The vast majority of my plushies are up on my top bunk nowadays (which u purposefully cannot see because after I was done taking pictures I just started tossing em up there and didn't feel like making them look nice jskdhgf;;; ) - I only keep my very favorites with me. Every time I blog about my plushies I get that comment and it's not funny anymore ;; -I am not a collector that keeps my plushies on shelves or behind glass cases; one of the primary reasons I love collecting plushies is because I love soft textures, so I love hugging and cuddling with them. So some of them are pretty beat up at this point! I also have a cat and if you have a cat, you know cat hair Everywhere is just a fact of life, so if you happen to see any...sorry! I cannot possibly de-cat-hair my entire apartment at all times. -I am not a photographer and my bedroom has crappy lighting, so these pictures aren't ~the prettiest~; the point of this is for me to just have some fun talking about one of my hobbies! -I have cultivated this collection over years and years and years; as I said, it's one of my hobbies, and it just brings me joy!

That said, THIS GON BE A LONG POST LMFAO, so if you're on board, hop under the read more and we'll get started uvu

We shall start with the non-weeb plushies skdjfhldfg, which is the smallest cohort |D;;; of special note are the baby penguin from Sunshine City Aquarium in Ikebukuro, the moose my parents got for me in Alaska, the big doofy red panda my college roommates got me for my birthday one year, and the dragon. THE DRAGON IS WEIGHTED. The dragon is delightful oh my god all plushies should be weighted;;;

Ghibli plushies! I got the vast majority of these while I was physically in Japan - the only two that I didn't were the foxsquirrel and the Totoro on top of it. The soot sprite I got at the Ghibli Museum itself uvu

Digimon plushies! I wish there were more decently sized Digimon plushies TAT;; (I like bigger plushies because they are easier to hug ok) The Culumon and Viximon (? I think I'm remembering that name right: Renamon's in-training form, the yellow fox blob sdjfgdfg) are bootlegs I am very sorry ;;; My Digimon Plush Goal is to somehow find an official Culumon someday TAT;;; I rlly like Culumon there was a period of time in elementary school where I drew nothing but Culumon so lol.

Random fandom plushies! Lessee, what's represented here...Sanrio, Hamtaro, Madoka, Heartcatch Precure, Higurashi, OneShot, Made in Abyss, Re:Zero, Undertale, and Deltarune! Ralsei's hat and glasses obviously come off...I, full disclosure, do not know where they are. They are probably under my bed somewhere sjkdfghsdg;;;;

OK HERE WE GO: most of my plushies are Pokemon plushies. What can I say...they're just so much fun to collect TAT;;; first up are a couple groups of miscellaneous babbies; you will soon see I like collecting some Pokes over others...

Miscellaneous babbies part two! See the lil Riolu? When I lived with my parents still, that Riolu was Joji's favorite plushie to steal |D;; she would semi-regularly come into my room and take plushies from me, but that one she took far more often than any other. She's such a small dog no damage was ever done, but still...Joji these are mine, not yours!

Miscellaneous babbies part three! This was originally meant to be legendary/mythical Pokes but then I remembered Raboot and Galarian Ponyta and was like "OH NO I HAVE TO INCLUDE THEM" I am not very good at this jsdhfglsjfdg

'pixs! (and two Ninetales) I have a very vivid memory of watching the first episode Vulpix appeared in in the anime and wanting a plushie of one so bad, but alas they were certainly not readily available to me yet, so I carried around a Simba plushie I had that evening pretending it was a Vulpix xD so if little me could see my Vulpix collection now she'd be very happy!!

'vees! ...I like me an Eevee, what can I say. There's actually one Eevee that's missing from this pic - I told you I'm not very good at this |D;;;

...oh there were TWO Eevees missing and I stuck them in this pic lol I CAN'T EVEN REMEMBER WHAT I TOOK PICTURES OF HOORAY anyway, Eeveelutions! I obviously favor certain evolutions over others |3 Eventually I would like to get at least one Espeon, Glaceon and Leafeon, just to say I have them all. But there is one more Eeveelution that I couldn't fit here...

...cause she BIG. My life-sized Sylveon takes the prize of biggest plushie I own. She hangs out at the foot of my bed uvu (also her ears are top heavy/don't have any wires in them so they've clearly flopped backwards...but she cute any way you slice it TAT)

THE PIKAS. ...Somehow I thought I had more Pikas than this. (Oh wait, I DO...they're just coming later cause they're in a special category |3 ) this is still a good amount of Pikas! Detective Pika is extraordinarily soft he's very good TAT;;; also two Raichu cause I don't have enough Raichu to take a separate pic of.

Mimis! I have a couple other Mimis that are also in the special category coming up hehe. Big Mimi was stuck in customs for a month after I got him so I'm glad he made it home eventually TAT;;;

HERE WE GO I have...a lot of Litten. Litten is my baby. Best Poke-kitty for me. I love my Litten TAT/////

PICHU PICHU PICHUUUU!!! My ultimate baby TAT///// Pichu so good...so happy to have so many Pichu...aaaa///// but wait, there are Absol here too?? Well, yes, of course. For I am a Pichu and my love is an Absol. So. I had to take pictures of the plushies together uvu

Some Large Friends that got their own picture. That rolly Charizard was the first thing I ever won from a crane game; I was ridiculously proud of myself |D;;;

SPECIAL CATEGORY: Halloween Pokes!!!! The PokeCen always has an Extremely Good Halloween campaign and it makes me angry...they're all so good...TAT////////

Aaand! Best for last!! SE plushies T//u//T The middle two Souls are very beat up, ahaha....I've had the smaller one for over a decade and the bigger one for almost a decade, so...they've gotten a lot of love//// (plus it is also funny to tease Soul - u know I'd give u a hug over the plushies any day baaaaaabe u3u) I really want to get Liz, Patty, and Tsubaki too, but Tsubaki is SUPER hard to find and I don't want to get Liz and Patty and not her TAT;;; there are also Excalibur plushies...............but I think I'm ok without an Excalibur plushie sjdkfghsdfg OH also not pictured; I do have a plush Shinigami glove |D

So! There it is! The hoard! If I were a dragon this would be my treasure hoard! It was nice to go through this so if you went through it with me I hope you had fun too!

#Erin irl #plushies #plush #pokemon #idk lol PLUSHIES

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n6or · 5 years ago

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i need you | raihan sfw

Rating: Teen

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: F/M

Fandom: Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions

Relationships: Kibana | Raihan/Reader, Dande | Leon/Sonia

Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Unrequited Love,

Words: 2534

READ HERE ON AO3!

To you, he was breathtaking. Everything about him was...ethereal; the curvature of his lips, the depth of his eyes, the love for those around him… He was so strong, carrying the weight of Galar on his shoulders; truly, you didn’t know how the Champion did it. You knew for a fact that you crumble under that sort of pressure; in fact, maybe that’s why you were happy working alongside Raihan, training to be the next dragon gym leader. It was never your goal, becoming a gym leader. You were happy to just settle down with your Dratini and live a quiet life… but your two best friends, Leon and Sonia, had convinced you to join them in the race to Champion. You didn’t quite know why they would want you to join, but after Sonia dropped out of the league, it was you who became one of Leon’s most formidable rivals.

With your team of blue dragons, you trained alongside Leon throughout the entirety of the Championships. You were young then, sixteen, going on seventeen. You didn’t really understand the whole ‘love’ thing, but you knew that the crush that was blooming inside you was suffocating—something that would prove difficult to uproot. Every time you saw him your heart fluttered and your stomach flipped. It was weird, wasn’t it? Being interested in one of your friends? Surely, it was. Leon never even seemed to glance at you in that kind of way, so burying your feelings was the only plausible resolution to this kind of thing.

Five long years had passed since then. Three long years you had remained professional and kept your feelings at bay for the Champion. He had more than enough on his plate, he didn’t have to deal with the worries of one of his closest pals being romantically invested in him. That was the fans’ job, you convinced yourself, not yours.

Although, not everyone around you was as dense as Leon. The only thing that stopped you from becoming Champion was, in fact, Leon. It was the final battle against him that had been your only loss, having defeated every gym leader and contestant up until that point.

It was after said final battle, when the challenge for the winning title ceased and Leon was crowned the Champion of Galar, you decided that professional battling wasn’t for you. You only competed in the tournament for Leon and Sonia, anyway. It was just some stroke of luck that you were good at battling, and unfortunately, the new Hammerlocke gym leader was adamant in fueling the dimly lit fire inside of you.

It was years – almost three – before you were contacted by an old acquaintance. As your Rotom phone rang, you stared at the caller ID, frowning.

Swipe.

“Man, I totally thought you weren’t going to ans—yo, shit, are you in the bath?” You sunk lower into the bubbles, glaring at the phone that only showed your face. Raihan’s stupid grin widened and a bark of laughter left him. “Ah man, I’m sorry. Awkward timing, huh? Well, uh, I wanted to ask if you’ll come train with me?”

“Train with you?” You sat up a little, frowning. “Why? It’s been years.”

He hummed, rubbing his chin. “Well… I’ve become a Dragon Gym Leader, over in Hammerlocke, and I wanted you to be my apprentice!”

“Apprentice?”

His grin didn’t falter, he merely nodded. “Yeah, my apprentice.”

“I don’t think Gym leaders have apprentices.”

“Aw, c’mon. Don’t be difficult, you know what I'm trying to say… Plus, you’d do it if it was the Champion asking, wouldn’t you?” The question caught you off guard, your eyes snapping back to the Rotom where you were met with Raihan’s lazy smirk. Bastard. Your face began to burn and the look on your face must’ve been priceless because Raihan laughed yet again. “Don’t worry, Kid. Your secret’s safe with me~ So be my cute little apprentice, yeah?”

“We’re the same age,” You sigh, looking away. “…I’ll think about it.”

“Awesome, meet me at Hammerlocke on Saturday, yeah? See you then, Partner~”

You rolled your eyes as the call ended and sunk beneath the fluffier bubbles.

It’s been a year since that phone call. A year since Raihan noticed your attraction for the Champion and swept you away to Hammerlocke to be trained as the new dragon gym leader. You knew Raihan wouldn’t give up his title yet—really, he only just got it. So why did he insist that you were to train with him so much?

“Hey there, day dreamer,” he says, gently knocking a cool, canned coffee against your forehead. You glance up at the smirking leader, an obvious frown creasing your brow.

"I was not," You retort, looking down at your coffee. The distant murmur of the television — of Leon's live interview — earns a click of your tongue.

"I dunno why you're so whipped." Raihan snickers as he drops into the seat across from you, cracking his coffee open and taking a long sip.

You stare at your coffee, chewing on your lower lip. There are no words. All you can do is shrug. Why were you so whipped? What was the point of it all?

"Will you be alright going to the interview later?"

"Of course I'll be alright."

"Alright, just making sure."

You continue to stare, reluctant to meet Raihan's gaze. You can feel his eyes upon you, piercing through the spot in which you sit like a solar beam. You fidget in your seat, huffing.

"Why do you do that?"

You look at him. He smirks.

"Do what?"

"Stare at me until I look at you?"

Raihan shrugs, feigning innocence. "No idea what you're talking about. Now c'mon, let's go get ready to watch that interview." He stands from his seat, coffee in one hand, the other hidden in his pocket." Apparently it's important; I think it's something to do with the new league."

You follow, pushing yourself up and quickening your smaller steps to match his strides. "Maybe… I wish we didn't have to go. Those interviews are always so boring…"

But how wrong you were. You sit in the locker-room of the stadium along with the other "apprentices", hands folded in your lap as you watch up at the screen. You blink a few times, thinking you've misheard Leon's statement.

The camera flickers over the different gym leaders, all smiling and cheering for the news, all but Raihan. His eyes are slightly wider, darting back to the entry door of the stadium. It's when he notices his face on the big screen that he forces a smile, feigning a laugh and clapping along

You suddenly feel heavy, body prickling with numbness. The sight is like a car crash: you know you shouldn't be watching, yet you can't look away.

Leon stands centre stage, Sonia to his left, hand resting against her hip. She looks so beautiful. Hair curled and, for once, falls down her back, loose from the usual ponytail. The dress she's wearing, too…

Why can't you breathe?

The new league is beginning early this season.

It's beginning early because they are—

You push yourself up the moment you feel a droplet against your bare thigh. Rubbing profusely at your eyes you dash down the halls of the stadium, making a beeline for the exit. Fans—you can hear them all, hear them gasping and giggling against one another, hearing something about Raihan's reaction, too. But you keep your head down.

Your hands are shaking as they wipe the tears that refuse to relent. They shake as you fish your Rotom phone from your satchel, typing out a typo filled message and hitting send.

Why did it hurt? Why did it hurt like this? You rub your chest, heaving heavy breaths, shoulders trembling. Your feet move on their own, head ducked low, weaving through the crowds that flood the streets surrounding the stadium.

You don't even remember the walk back to the hotel; don't remember entering the bathroom, or running the shower; you especially don't remember when Raihan arrived. You don't remember the way he kicked off his shoes, calling out your name, running to rip open the glass door of the shower. It is black for now. You choke on broken sobs, allowing his arms to wrap securely around you, allowing him to hold you close.

The water is cold, you remember that. You remember a large palm rubbing up and down your back, under the sodden clothes that strangle you. You both sit in the bottom of the shower, Raihan's back against the tiled wall as the water cascades over the pair of you.

You never stop shaking. It feels like you both sit in the bottom of that shower for years—so much so that the freezing droplets no longer feel like daggers etching into your skin. Your head lays against his chest when the stress slowly alleviates, dragging away like an unpleasant veil.

"I'm sorry," You manage out, voice barely audible. "Th… This is unprofessional…"

The hand that rubs your back doesn't stop. It's so warm—like a furnace. You enjoy the gentle touch.

"Don't be," the lower voice murmurs. "You can't help it. I'm just glad you let me help you." His hand moves to the back of your head, smoothing your sodden strands. "The bravest thing you can do is allow people to help you. You're not weak for sending that message—for reaching out." You hear him pause and you look up, noticing an unusual smile—one you've never seen before; his eyes are soft, lips curled upwards into a small, almost fond smile. "I admire you for reaching out, Y/N."

You don't know why that makes you cry more, but it does. You crumple back into the wet fabric that hides his chest, shoulders shaking as you cling to him. It's there that you feel safe—in Raihan's arms you feel as if nothing could ever harm you; it's an absurd thought, you think, but you couldn't care less.

Exhaustion sneaks upon you like a stalking predator, striking you unexpectedly. It doesn't feel like long, but when you awaken you're in a fresh change of clothes with a rather warm figure beside you.

Confused, you slowly push yourself up, looking around the darkened room. You rub the sleep from your swollen eyes, tensing when you notice a pair of teal irises peering up at you in the darkness. Quickly, your eyes avert and you clear your throat, ignoring the burn to your cheeks.

"Th… Thank you. For before. And—are these your clothes?"

You look down and frown, not recognising the black tee. It swims on you.

"Yeah. I didn't want you to catch a cold." You blink, meeting his gaze as he speaks. Your whole face grows ten shades darker, eyes wide. "You have suuuuch a cute body~"

You slap his arm at the teasing tone. "How could you! Pervert! I can't believe you would take advantage of me like—" Sitting up, Raihan leans over, having to duck quite a bit to reach your height. It's then that you realise he's shirtless and very close to you. You lean back a little, breath hitching at the sudden proximity change. "Th… That."

"I'd never do that kind of thing, Kid." His tone is low and velvety. It's the first time you've seen him this serious. "Especially not to you." He looks away after that comment and hums. "Though… I did have to take your uniform off to dry you. Don't worry, I didn't take any cheeky glances."

You chew on your lip as he speaks and nod slowly.

Silence encompasses the pair of you for a moment. You watch him, uncertain as to what you're wanting to say to him. You frown, staring harder at him, as if that would give you the answers.

He glances back at you and cocks a brow, unable to stop himself from chuckling. "What? Why're you staring at me like that?" Hesitantly, you reach out and grab his hand. Squeezing it between both of yours. Your eyes lock onto his, staring up at him. "W-What is it?"

"You… made me feel safe. Made me feel better." You bow your head, squeezing his hands. "You brought me back and made me feel… not so hurt. I'm happy for Lee, I really am… I just don't know why he'd keep that from me-" The break in your voice has him squeezing your hands back. "I thought we were best friends… I know I loved him—I mean, I think I loved him. I don't know but I would've supported him… And it just made me feel useless, like I wasn't worth telling-"

"Y/N…"

"W-Wait, please…" You look up at him, eyes teary once more. He gives you a hesitant nod. "Lee and Sonia were my only friends, so not being told… It hurt. It hurt so bad… But you made me feel better and you have no idea how much that means to me. When I get like that—I just—I'm thankful you came."

"I'm thankful you messaged me," he whispers, his free hand moving to your jaw. You tense at the sudden contact, but soon you find yourself melting into the gentleness of his caress. "I meant what I said about you being brave. It takes a lot of courage to reach out for help… A lot of people wouldn't do that. I'm happy you could trust me like that, yknow? It makes me feel special."

"But you are special?" You say with a tilt of your head.

Now it's Raihan's turn to look surprised. He chuckles quietly, hand moving to reside at your name. "Careful, I might fall in love with you if you say such cute things~"

The pair of you laugh together, Raihan's voice harmonising nicely to yours. You smile to yourself, staring at the hand you hold. Your nimble fingers curl around his, squeezing gently, when you feel him close the gap between you.

Startled, you look up, eyes widening when his forehead rests against yours. He searches your eyes for a moment, looking from left, to right, to left again.

"A-Are you going to kiss me?" You find yourself whispering.

"Can I?"

His breath fans against your lips and, to your own surprise, you nod.

Giving your hand another squeezed, Raihan leans down, and with unbelievable softness, his lips slowly press to yours. You can feel wings fluttering within your chest, the butterflies erupting with fervour. You grip his hand tightly, squeezing your eyes shut as his lips take their time in caressing yours. His fingertips move soothingly against the back of your neck, the action eliciting a shiver followed by a blanket of goosebumps.

The kiss is slow, gentle, almost as if he's attempting to reassure you of something. Leaning closer into Raihan, you sigh into the kiss, completely at ease with the feeling of his lips dragging along yours.

It's not long before the kiss ceases and you both gather your breath. Quietly, Raihan wraps an arm around your waist and presses a firm, lingering kiss to your forehead.

It's then that you realise that your heart is safe with the Dragon Tamer.

#nor writes #raihan x reader #pokemon sword #pokemon shield #pokemon swsh #self insert #anime #pokemon #kibana #kibana x reader

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reciprocityfic · 4 years ago

Text

when there are no wars to fight

title: when there are no wars to fight fandom: wonder woman, dccu pairing: steve trevor x diana prince rating: T summary: so she goes to america, the comforting weight of his watch constantly weighing down her pocket, a crumpled piece of paper clutched tightly in her fist that bears a single address, written in etta's neat script.

trevor ranch 1202 owl creek lane meeteetse, wyoming

(diana goes home for steve after the war, desperately searching for more answers about the man she loved.)

author’s note: yay for my second wondertrev fic!

i started this awhile back, but finally got the inspiration to finish it because wondertrev love week put my butt into gear. i wanted to finish it in time for their day three writing prompt: trevor ranch.

hope you all like it! let me know what you think.

xoxo, rebekah

read on archive of our own

when there are no wars to fight

Etta asks her, one early, gray London morning in a quaint cafe, over tea and baked goods that somehow pass as breakfast, rather than dessert, in this strange world of Man. It’s been awhile, now, since victory was announced. Celebrations have come and gone, soldiers have returned home, and life has become fairly mundane again.

And her - she’s been waiting for some sort of sign telling her what to do next.

She’s thought of trying to go back to Themyscira - at least, for a little while; she made a promise to herself that she would not abandon this world, and it is something she intends to keep. A goal towards which she will strive for the remainder of her existence on this earth. But she decides against it, not wanting to mar her bright, shining memory of home with the burden of reality she now carries. Plus, she doesn’t want to have to say goodbye again. She fears it will hurt even more the second time around.

So she’s been in a sort of suspended state, neither here nor there. And it’s Etta, who finally asks her.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” she begins, peering at her over the rim of her teacup, “what are you going to do now that you’re not...y’know, fighting on the battlefield, saving the world, and the sort?”

She doesn’t answer right away, and Etta - perpetually polite to a T - puts down her cup, and begins apologizing.

“It’s not that I don’t want you around. The opposite, actually - I quite enjoy your company. I’m just wondering what someone...like you does when there are no wars to fight - “

When there are no wars to fight.

The rest of Etta’s words fade away until that phrase is all she can hear, ringing over and over in her ears.

“Is this what people do when there are no wars to fight?”

“This, and other things.”

“What things?”

She supposes that’s what she must now figure out.

“Oh, dear. I’ve offended you, haven’t I?” Etta humphs, before taking a large bite of a scone and rolling her eyes at herself.

“You haven’t offended me,” she assures her, smiling softly. Etta sighs in relief, and then cracks a joke that she doesn’t quite get because she’s still trying to figure out the ins and outs of society. Humor will be one of the last things to come.

“Where would he have gone?”

She’s dodging Etta’s question. She doesn’t want to think about the future and all the unknowns that it presents. They’ve been gnawing at her brain enough recently, and she doesn’t wish to talk about them. At least not now.

But that doesn’t mean her curiosity isn’t genuine, her inquiry insincere. It’s been one of the main things on her mind, in fact. What was his life like without war? Who was he when he woke up to peace instead of fighting, safe in a bed instead of huddled inside a tent in some foreign land? What would he have shown her, taught her?

What could they have been together?

“Home, I suppose.”

Etta’s answer pulls her from her thoughts. She looks at the woman, who stares back at her with her lips pressed together in a sad smile.

“Did he miss it?” she asks. “His home?”

He never spoke to her of home. She remembers his anecdote about his father, back in Themyscira.

“My father used to say, you see something wrong in the world, you can either do nothing, or you can do something.”

His father, whose watch now sits in the pocket of her coat. She hasn’t let it out of her sight since she found it after her battle with Ares, sitting on a piece of broken concrete. Somehow, it remained in perfect condition, just as it was as he placed it in her hands before marching off to sacrifice himself. She ran her fingers over the leather of the band, the glass covering the face, watched the tick tick tick of the second hand, and vowed to never let it out of her sight.

It was now the most important object to her, more valuable than any shield or sword would ever be. She will protect it with her life. And the constant weight of it has been one of few comforts over the past weeks. A piece of him to carry with her, always.

And she can’t help but wonder what other pieces of him might be left behind.

“Where was his home?” she continues. “His family? Did he speak of them with you? Have you met them? Have - “

“My, my,” Etta interrupts, “you’re like a question machine.”

She pauses, mouth still open around her next inquiry. Feeling herself begin to blush, she closes her lips, bites down on the bottom one.

“I want to know him,” she explains softly, looking down at their table, fingers playing with the edge of the ivory lace tablecloth.

“And that’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Etta assures her gently. “Of course, I’ll tell you what I know. It’s not much, to be honest - just bits and pieces. He was a spy, after all. But all the information I do have is back at the office.”

She nods, takes one more short sip of tea and then rises. Because now she’s decided. Her next steps in life are no longer murky; rather, they shine brightly in the surrounding darkness, beckoning her forward. She doesn’t want to wait now that she knows where she’s going.

She’s going home for him.

Etta hurriedly gathers herself and rushes after her.

“You certainly don’t let any grass grow under your feet, do you?”

She smiles at Etta’s mumbling as she pushes the door to the cafe open. She doesn’t quite get it - more humor and quirks in language that go over her head - but she suspects it’s supposed to be funny. She’s about to ask Etta what it means when she’s nearly knocked over by two people passing on the sidewalk.

“Sorry, love!” the man shouts in apology, before laughing alongside the woman besides him.

She watches them as they continue together, their joined hands swinging between them.

“Why are they holding hands?”

“Probably because they’re together.”

She remembers the way her heart stuttered when she took his fingers between hers, so innocently that first time. And then later, not so innocently - that night in Veld.

Her heart had skipped that same beat.

Now, her heart contracts, breaks for the one thousandth time over missing him so profoundly. Cries as it watches the strangers turn the corner, moans miserably as the memory plays in her head.

And her smile slips.

* * *

She goes to America.

That’s where he’s from, after all; she’d known that much. Etta confirms this for her, and soon after her tickets are booked and her bags are packed.

There’s no one there to see her off as she boards the ship to New York City. Etta was starting secretary work for someone new the morning she was set to leave, so she made her dinner the night before and then said goodbye with a warm hug, grasping her hand as she walked out the door.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for, Diana,” she murmured.

She smiled, squeezed her hand back before letting go.

“I hope so, too.”

There’s no one to see her off, but she stands on the ship’s deck anyways, staring down at the crowd gathered onshore. She watches the people leaving wave to the people staying behind, shouting goodbyes and words of love that surely the other won’t be able to hear. But they shout anyway, continue to wave even as the ship pulls away and those on land become dots on the horizon.

She goes to America, his watch always on her person, a crumpled piece of paper clutched tightly in her fist that bears a single address, written in Etta’s neat script.

Trevor Ranch 1202 Owl Creek Lane Meeteetse, Wyoming

She takes a train from New York to Cheyenne, and then takes a different, smaller one - one she’s sure isn’t really meant for passengers - to the town the paper in her hand denotes as his.

Meeteetse.

That’s all the sign outside the small train station says when she reaches her destination, painted in blood-orange capital letters against a dark wood background. The only thing to signal that she’s in the right place, along with the railway worker’s word as he escorted her from the train.

“Yep, this’s Meeteetse,” he assures in a slow drawl. “Doesn’t get many guests. They’ll prolly throw a parade for you.”

He laughs at his own joke. He’s a good deal shorter than her, his face covered with a thin layer of dirt. She smiles back politely, but moves herself onto the station platform quickly. She is ready to leave traveling behind. Ready to get where she was going.

She’s ready to find his home.

She turns on her heel, starts towards the dirt path that leads to the tiny town, and the worker shouts as he reboards the train.

“Hope you find what you’re looking for, sweetheart!”

The words make her pause. They’re the same ones Etta had told her as she left her apartment that last night. She finds she misses the woman already.

She continues on, every step she takes kicking up a cloud of dust beneath her feet. By the time she gets to the center of town, there’s a significant amount of dirt covering her black boots, just as there was on the railway worker’s face. Just as there seems to be on everything in this town, at least from the outside.

It’s so different from London or New York, or even Cheyenne. So quiet. So full of nothingness.

She looks around, sees a car parked in front of a general store, a few horses tied up alongside a building that says ‘Saloon’. She looks for some sort of center or government building - a town hall, perhaps - but finds none. She chews on her bottom lip, not sure what to do next. She turns to the other side of the street.

A single building stands in front of her, made of the same dark brown wood that seems to be the building material for every structure in town. A sign, much like the one outside the train station, hangs over the door, painted with blood-orange letters that spell out ‘HOTEL’ this time, instead of the town’s name.

She decides it’s her best shot, and walks to the door. As she opens it, a bell rings, alerting the man she sees sitting at a desk in the corner of the small lobby to her presence. He looks up from the book he’s reading, a cigarette hanging between his lips.

“You need a room?” he inquires, voice low and raspy.

“No,” she answers quickly. “At least, not right now. Maybe later.”

The man at the desk tilts his head slightly.

“What can I help you with, then?”

She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out right away. Instead, she realizes she’s still standing in the entryway, door swung open. She steps inside, letting the door go.

“I-”

The door slams behind her, cutting her off, and she flinches at the loud sound.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” the man asks.

She smiles shyly, and shakes her head, twisting the toe of her boot into the floor.

She’s nervous. She’s in a new place, with no one to guide her this time. And it’s so different from all the other places she’s been in this world. If anything, it reminds her of Veld. A bit smaller, perhaps.

“Can you tell from the way I’m stuttering and stumbling about?” she jokes, hoping it will break the tension in the room. She looks up at the man, and he puts on a friendly smile.

“That. And there’s the fact that I know everyone in this town, and you’re not anyone I know. Don’t get many visitors, either. But when we do get ‘em, they don’t look nothing like you.”

He drops his cigarette on the ground, stubs it out with his shoe. Then, he takes an extra one from behind his ear, rummaging around his desk and grabbing a box of matches.

“I am wondering,” he begins, as he strikes one and uses it to light his cigarette, “if I can’t get you a room, what it is I can do for you.”

“I was hoping you could help me find something. A place,” she tells him.

He shrugs.

“Not many places ‘round here, but go ‘head.”

She clenches the slip of paper, still in her fist. However, she doesn’t need to look at it. She’d memorized the address only moments after Etta gave it to her.

“Trevor Ranch,” she begins. “1202 Owl Creek La-”

“I know Trevor Ranch,” he interrupts.

Her eyes light up, and she takes a few steps forward.

“You do?”

“Yep,” he confirms, sticking his thumb out towards the left. “‘Bout ten miles down the road thataway.”

Ten miles. A little far to walk, though she could manage, of course. But if there was another way.

“Do you know anyone who could take me there? Or…” she thinks, “a horse! If you had a horse I could borrow, I could ride it there and -”

“Whoa there, slow down,” he interrupts again. “Listen, I don’t have a horse for you to borrow. But I see out the window that Johnny’s car is across the street in front of the general store. He’ll drive you to Trevor Ranch.”

“He will? How much does he charge?”

“He won’t charge ya anything,” he says, laughing. “Jee, you’re really not from around here. Just tell ‘im you want to go to the ranch, and he’ll take you. Tell him Stu sent you.”

“Thank you so much,” she tells him as she turns to leave. “Really. Thank you.”

He laughs again, and waves at her as she exits the building. She marches across the street towards the store, newfound confidence and excitement radiating through her. There’s a man at the back of the now, loading something in.

“Excuse me! Are you Johnny?”

“Jesus!” the man exclaims, jumping slightly and spilling a crate full of corn onto the ground. “Warn a guy, won’t ya?”

The man turns around with a startled and slightly annoyed look on his face. His eyes widen for a moment when he sees her, but then his brow furrows.

“Yeah, I’m Johnny. John. Who are you?”

“My name is Diana,” she begins, and motions towards the hotel. “Stu, from the hotel - he said that you could drive me to Trevor Ranch.”

He frowns, and then bends down to put the corn back in its crate. He loads it in the back of the car, and then shuts the door, turning towards her.

“What do you wanna go there for?” he asks, looking her over suspiciously.

“I, uh -”

She pauses, looking down at her feet. She’s still not good at lying. She steadies herself, planting her feet in the ground and putting on a sweet smile before looking up.

“I know them. The Trevors. From a long time ago.”

“Huh,” he says. “Like an old family friend?”

“Yes. An old family friend. Exactly that.”

He nods, rubbing his hand over his face.

“Get in,” he tells her.

“Thank you,” she says, breathing a sigh of relief. “Thank you so much.”

She can feel her anticipation build as she gets in the car, as the vehicle starts and drives away. Ten miles, he said. Ten miles until she would be there.

She sits in the car, looks out the window at the scenery zooming past. She can’t concentrate. She feels jittery, but in a good way. The way she felt the night before her first training with Antiope. Her stomach turns in the same way it did in Veld, when he took her to teach her to dance. She can barely sit still, bouncing her knees up and down, up and down.

Suddenly, John pulls off the road, and the car screeches to a halt.

Her face scrunches in confusion, and she looks at the man beside her.

“What are you -”

“I know you’re not an old family friend of the Trevors,” he begins rapidly, crossing his arms in front of him. “I’m an old family friend of the Trevors, so I would know you, or at least have heard of you if you were. Plus, because I’m an old family friend, I know for a fact that Dorothy and El have never been fifty miles from the ranch in their whole lives, and you sure as hell ain’t from around here.”

She gapes at him. She’s been caught in her lie, and she doesn’t know how to escape now.

“Look, I’m not trying to be mean or nothin’,” he says with a sigh, “but I gotta be there for them now. I gotta protect them. I have been the past few years, and now that...now that Steve’s not comin’ back -”

The breath leaves her chest at the mention of his name.

“You know Steve?” she whispers.

“Yeah, I know Steve. I’m an old family friend, I told you. You know Steve?”

“Yes,” she breathes, nodding her head slowly.

“How?”

“We fought together in the war,” she answers, without thinking.

He stares at her like she’s just grown a second head. She clears her throat, falls back on a lie they’d used before.

“He fought,” she says. “I didn’t. Obviously. I was his secretary.”

John hums, and looks out on the road in front of them.

“What did you say your name was again?”

“Diana,” she says, swallowing once, praying that Steve had never mentioned Etta’s name. “Diana Prince.”

“Diana Prince,” he says slowly.

He stares out of the front window for a few more minutes, a frown on his face, and then turns the car back on. He pulls back out onto the dirt road and starts driving again, and she closes her eyes in relief.

“Do you have something for Dorothy and El?” he asks. “For their dad? Is that why you’re here?”

“No,” she says hesitantly, thinking of the watch in her pocket briefly before banishing the thought from her mind. The watch was hers. He gave it to her, and it was all she had of him - at least for the moment. No one could take it from her.

“Then what’re you doing here?”

She doesn’t answer right away, carefully choosing her words. Trying to convey her purpose without giving everything away.

“I was very...fond of him. Steve. While we worked together, we created a great friendship. And I guess I just wanted to...get to know him better. Even better than I did.”

“That...makes sense, I guess,” he tells her, still frowning.

She nods, smiling quickly when he glances over at her.

The rest of the drive is quiet, the car the only thing filling the space with noise. She continues to stare out the window, but she doesn’t really see any of the scenery. She’s too nervous now, the feeling churning in her gut closer to fear now, rather than eagerness.

The car begins to slow, and she sits up straight, becoming more aware. Something outside catches her eye. Another sign - made of the same wood as the town, but this time with white letters, instead of red.

TREVOR RANCH

As the car turns into the long dirt driveway, her heart stops, then starts again in double-time.

“Do they know you’re coming?” John asks her.

“No,” she answers. “I didn’t...I didn’t have a number, or I would’ve called. Is it okay? That I’m here?”

“It’ll be fine,” he sighs. “Just...be careful. Be nice. They’re not really in a good place right now, with everything that’s going on. Especially Dorothy, and I don’t even want to think about Mr. Trevor. El is okay, because she’s young, I think. But the rest of them…”

He trails off as he stops the car next to a red barn.

“I just don’t want your visit to get ruined because someone gets offended or says the wrong thing.”

He turns the engine off and they both exit the vehicle. She closes her door, looks out in front of her.

There’s a tiny white house about a stone’s throw away from them. Her eyes widen as she takes it in - his childhood home.

She can’t help the grin that breaks out onto her face. The fear in her stomach has swirled back into excitement, and she takes off towards the house, trying her best not to run. She notices after a moment, though, that John isn’t following her. Instead, he’s walking towards the barn.

“You’re not coming with me?” she shouts over her shoulder.

“Nah,” he says, shaking his head. “Got work to do.”

He walks off, and she watches him as she prepares herself to continue towards the house. He disappears into the barn, and her heart drops the smallest bit.

She’d become sort of attached to him in their short car ride - attached to someone who knew Steve like she did. Plus, he seemed to believe her story. She expected he would vouch for her when she met with Dorothy and El.

Dorothy and El.

She doesn’t know for sure who they are, but she suspects they are his sisters. She wonders what they will be like. If they’ll approve of her. If they’ll believe her story.

If they’ll be anything like Steve was.

She starts off towards the house again, determination in her every step. Her heart pounds as she steps onto the front porch. She stops in front of the door. Before she knocks, she reaches into her pocket, runs her fingers over his watch.

Then, she steps forward, and pounds her fist gently against the door.

No one answers for a while. In fact, she’s just raised her hand to knock again when the door creaks open with a soft creak.

A girl stands before her. And that’s what she is - a girl, not a woman. She can’t be any older than eighteen, in her best estimation. She’s a whole head shorter than her, with long blonde hair and hazel eyes that look up at her curiously, her brow furrowed.

“Who are you?” she asks, her voice light and trilling.

It takes her a moment to respond. She’s caught off guard - this isn’t who she expected to answer the door. By the time she gathers herself and opens her mouth, someone else appears in the background.

“El, why are you standing there with the door wide -”

The other person - a woman this time, just as tall as her and seemingly around the same age - stops speaking when she sees her, walking up behind the girl and putting her hands on the girl’s shoulders.

“Who are you?” she asks, echoing the girl’s question, but not mimicking her curiosity. Instead, she seems annoyed, almost. Upset that someone is there, bothering them.

Again, it takes a moment for her to say something. She’s taken aback again, this time for a very different reason.

This woman - she looks just like him. Light brown hair, baby blue eyes. She even has the same nose, and she’s taken back to when she first met Steve, hovering over him on the beach as he regained consciousness, studying his face. He was objectively beautiful, she determined quickly, and this woman is, too.

Steve had only become more and more beautiful to her as she got to know him, as she learned his heart and soul. She remembers that night in Veld, running her fingertips gently down his face, cherishing him as he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers.

“Hello? Hey, lady!”

She’s pulled out of her memories by the woman’s voice. She looks visibly bothered now, the impatience in her voice now displayed in the expression on her face.

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes quickly. “I just…”

But she trails off again, not knowing what to say. Should she be plain with the two people in front of her, and simply tell them the truth? Should she attempt to play a part, like she did with John? She wishes, again, that he had come to the door with her, that he could explain why she was there.

The woman, meanwhile, rolls her eyes. She’s about to say something, but the girl cuts her off with her gentle voice.

“How did you even get here?”

She smiles softly, trying to convey some sort of friendliness.

“I met John in town. In Meeteetse. And he agreed to drive me here.”

“I’m gonna kill that guy,” the woman mutters under her breath. “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want, but we’re not really in the mood for visitors right now. So if you could just...go, we’d really appreciate it.”

She turns, then, pulling the girl along with her, going to shut the door. But she reaches her arm out quickly to stop the woman from closing it, utilizing some of her extraordinary strength to ensure the door would stay open.

“Please,” she begs. “This is important! I knew your brother.”

She feels the pressure on the door lessen immediately. The woman’s face softens the tiniest bit.

“I knew Steve,” she says again. “He was your brother, right?”

The two don’t answer, just stare at her. So she keeps going, looking down at the girl.

“And you’re El,” she tells her, and then looks back at the woman. “Then you must be Dorothy. John told me your names.”

“How did you know my brother?” the girl - El - asks. Her face is brighter now, and the interest in her eyes has grown tenfold. “Wait - do you want to come in?”

“El,” Dorothy sighs. “We don’t even know if she’s telling the truth.”

“She is!” El insists. “I can tell. You always say I’m good at reading people.”

“We don’t even know her name.”

“Diana,” she supplies quickly. “Diana Prince.”

“And now we know her name,” El announces, turning to her sister. “Come on, Dot, please? Let’s just...talk to her.”

Dorothy hesitates, eyes darting between her and El. Finally, she sighs heavily, rolling her eyes again.

“Fine. Come in, I guess,” she says, opening the door wider. Then she looks at her sister, mutters to her, “Don’t call me Dot. You know I hate that.”

The two sisters disappear inside. Before following them, she closes her eyes, lifts her head up towards the sky.

“Please give me the words to say,” she whispers to him. “Please help them to like me.”

* * *

They lead her to a table in the corner of a tiny kitchen, newspapers scattered all over it. Dorothy offers her coffee, and she accepts to be polite. She doesn’t really like coffee; it’s too bitter for her taste.

She sits down with El, and Dorothy comes over a moment later, handing Diana a red mug full of the hot, brownish-black liquid. She pulls out her chair and sits down, gathering up the newspapers and tossing them onto the black and white checkered linoleum floor.

“So,” El begins, smiling at her. “How did you know my brother?”

She smiles back at the girl, glances at Dorothy out of the corner of her eye.

“Well, I was his secretary during the war,” she explains. “We worked closely together on many occasions.”

Dorothy hums, and takes a sip of her coffee. She looks over at El, and sees the girl’s face has fallen just a bit.

“His secretary?” she asks.

She sounds confused by this, and Diana feels her palms begin to sweat, fearing El has somehow caught her in her lie.

But before she can try and answer, Dorothy speaks.

“Yeah, El. Remember he wrote about a secretary in one of his letters? She would organize his missions, and stuff like that.”

El still hesitates for a moment, staring at her strangely, before plastering on a pleasant smile.

“Oh yeah,” she murmurs. “I forgot.”

“He would write us letters,” Dorothy tells her quietly, “especially at the beginning, when he first enlisted. But then the war dragged on and on, and the letters came less often.”

“It’s not because he forgot about us, or missed us less,” El chimes in.

“Of course it wasn’t,” Diana agrees. “He was just more and more busy as the war continued. And he was a spy, of course, so it’s not like -”

“He was a spy?!” El shouts, half-standing from her chair.

“El!” Dorothy reprimands. “Stop shouting.”

“Oh!” Diana exclaims lightly. “You...you didn’t know that?”

“No,” El humphs. “They barely told us anything.”

Diana looks between the two of them as they quietly absorb this new information.

“Well, at least we know why, now,” Dorothy murmurs, then turns to her.

“Was he...good at it? Being a spy? I can’t see him as a spy,” she says, a slight smile appearing on her face, memories of her brother flooding her mind. “It seems like he would be...too virtuous, or something. Too earnest.”

“He was virtuous. Eager to do the right thing,” Diana agrees. “But that meant he was willing to do anything to make the war end and bring peace, even if that meant being a spy. And he was a brilliant spy. An admirable soldier.”

She hesitates, not knowing how much she should tell them about his death. She doesn’t know if they’ll want to hear about it, nor does she know if her heart can take speaking about it again - it seems to be getting harder, rather than easier, with time. However, she feels like she needs to tell them. They must know truly how admirable he was.

“I don’t know how much they told you about his...death,” she begins softly, “but I want you to know that he sacrificed himself to save many people. Thousands, perhaps. And that is the most honorable sacrifice one can make - to give their life, even for people they do not know.”

The room is quiet for a moment, as they remember their loved one - his life, his death, and his legacy.

“He was a very good man,” El says quietly.

“More than that,” Diana counters. “More than good. Extraordinary.”

“They sent us a letter when he died,” El explains, “but again, it didn’t say much. The only other thing we got was the story in the paper.”

She reaches down onto the floor, picks up one of the newspapers that Dorothy had gathered up earlier, and flips through the pages.

“These are from Cody,” Dorothy explains. “Mr. Stewart from the hotel picked some up for us when he was visiting relatives.”

“Who is Cody?” Diana asks, as El finally opens to a page and hands the paper to her.

“Cody is just another town. Bigger than Meeteetse.”

Diana doesn’t respond, because she’s too captivated by the newspaper in front of her.

VFW HONORS LOCAL HERO

There’s a picture of him staring back at her, a smile on his face. He’s young in the photo; it must have been taken when he first joined the army. She can tell not only by his physical appearance - there are less creases around his bright eyes - but also by the expression on his face. It’s innocent, almost. Naive. One that hasn’t witnessed the horrors of war and man.

She imagines it’s an expression similar to the one she wore, when she boarded the boat to leave Themyscira. Brave, but unsullied by the realities of the world.

She runs her fingers over the photo in front of her, traces the planes of his face and body with the tip of her index finger. She wishes that she’d know him then. That they’d grown up together.

That she’d been there for every moment of his life.

She smiles, but she can feel the pressure of tears start to build behind her eyes.

“You can keep that if you want,” El offers. “We have extras. Mr. Stewart brought us a lot of copies.”

“Thank you,” Diana breathes. “I think I will keep it.”

El smiles kindly.

They’re all quiet again for a minute. Then, Dorothy gets up.

“I have to get started on supper,” she says. “Dad will be getting hungry. El, why don’t you take Ms. Prince and show her around the ranch?”

“Please, call me Diana.”

“Alright then, Diana. Come on, let’s go!” El tells her as she gets up and walks out the front door.

Dorothy chuckles.

“She has too much energy for her own good sometimes.”

“How old is she?” Diana asks.

“Seventeen.”

“So young?”

“She was a unexpected surprise,” Dorothy explains, “long after Mom and Dad thought they were done havin’ babies. I was seventeen myself when she was born. Steve was fifteen.”

“May I ask where your mother is?” Diana inquires. “John said something about your father being here, but he didn’t mention your mother.”

Dorothy looks out the kitchen window for a long moment before answering.

“She died during childbirth.”

“I’m so sorry,” Diana murmurs.

“At least we have El - Eleanor. That was my mom’s name.”

A silence settles over the kitchen - Dorothy remembering her mother, Diana thinking of and missing her own mother - before Dorothy eventually speaks again.

“You better get out there. She’ll come looking for you soon.”

Diana smiles, and rises from the table, tucking the newspaper in her coat pocket alongside his watch.

* * *

El gives her a brief tour of the grounds - shows her the cattle and the corn crop - before losing interest, and leading her to what she calls a “very special place”.

After about five minutes of walking, Diana speaks.

“Where are you taking me?”

“We’re almost there,” El promises. “And I told you, it’s a special place.”

They walk for a few more minutes, and then come across a small river.

“What is this?” she asks.

“Owl Creek,” El tells her. “Me and Steve used to come here when I was little and play. It’s not deep enough to swim, but we would wade in it when it was summer, and he taught me how to skip stones on top of the water. Do you know how?”

“I don’t. Will you teach me?”

“Of course,” El says, and gets to work finding smooth stones to try and throw.

The talent comes rather easily to Diana, as most physical capabilities do to her, but she tells El it’s because she had such a good teacher.

El shrugs.

“Well, my brother taught me, so that must mean he was a good teacher.”

Diana smiles softly, and nods her head.

“Yes, it does.”

They spend a few minutes like that, quietly skipping stones together, memories of Steve running through their minds.

“I know you weren’t my brother’s secretary.”

Diana freezes.

“In one of his letters,” El continues, still skipping stones, “he said the name of his secretary. Dorothy must not remember, but I do. Her name was Etta something. Candy, maybe?”

Her stomach drops. She doesn’t know what to do, so she waits. Waits for El to yell at her, to scream for help, to run back and tell Dorothy.

But she simply stands there, looking out over the river. Diana decides to mimic her calm behavior, and skips the next stone in her hand.

“Why didn’t you tell you sister?”

“Because I knew she would tell you to leave,” El says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Maybe she should have made me leave,” Diana tells her, panic beginning to creep into the edges of her voice. “Maybe that’s not all I’m lying about. Maybe I never even knew - “

“You knew him,” El interrupts. “I know you did. I can tell.”

“How?” she asks.

“By the way you looked at that picture of him in the paper.”

She feels the pressure of tears behind her eyes again.

“How did I look at him?”

“Like you love him.”

She closes her eyes, but a tear still manages to escape the corner of her eye, falls down her cheek and catches the line of her jaw.

“I did love him,” she whispers. “I still do.”

“And that’s how I know you’re a good person. I mean, I could tell even when I met you, because I’m good at reading people. But I can tell even more now. If you knew my brother, and love him, you have to be a good person.”

Diana opens her eyes, and the liquid in them shines in the early evening sun.

“I knew if I told Dorothy you were lying,” El says, going back to skipping stones, “there’s no way she would’ve let you stay. Even if there was a good reason for your lying. Maybe you were a spy, too.”

“I’m not quite a spy, but I did fight alongside your brother in the war,” she reveals.

“How? I thought women weren’t allowed to fight in the war.”

“Where I come from, girls are trained in fighting from childhood, to prepare them to defend themselves and the people around them.”

El considers this, tilting her head to the side.

“That sounds pretty amazing.”

“It is,” Diana confirms, a light laugh escaping her chest. “It’s pretty amazing.”

They look at each other, an understanding forming between them.

“I won’t tell Dorothy that you’re not Steve’s secretary. It’ll be our secret.”

Diana nods, placing a finger over her lips. El chuckles.

“Besides, she’s taken a liking to you now. We don’t want to ruin it.”

“I didn’t think she was going to let me in the house when I first knocked,” she admits.

“Nah, Dot’s not that tough,” El tells her. “She pretends to be, especially since Steve died, but inside she’s a softie.”

“I thought she hated when you call her Dot,” Diana teases.

“No,” El says, getting quiet. “That’s just what Steve used to call her, so she’s...sensitive about it now.”

“Oh,” she murmurs.

El smiles slightly, and turns her head down, her long blonde hair falling into her face.

“He used to call me Ellie.”

Diana takes a step towards her, reaches out her hand and gingerly places it on her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, El.”

She feels the weight of his watch in her pocket, more heavy than normal. Hesitantly, she takes it out, looking it over, swiping her thumb over the glass.

El looks up, sees the watch in Diana’s hands. Her eyes widen.

“My dad gave that to my brother when he left for the war. How did you get that?”

“Before he died,” she begins, “your brother gave it to me. And I cherish it. I always keep it with me, no matter where I am or what I’m doing. It reminds me of him and everything he showed me.”

“It’s important to you,” El says.

“Yes, but...you can have it, if you want it.”

“Don’t you want it, though?” she asks, confusion coloring her features.

“I do,” Diana admits, “but you were his family. His sister.”

El looks up at her, and then reaches out and takes the watch. She turns it over in her hands, and then hands it back to Diana.

“No,” she tells her, shaking her head. “You take it. He gave it to you, which means he cared about you a lot. Probably loved you. Which means you’re his family, too. Plus, you need something to remember him by.”

Taken aback by the young girl’s kindness, Diana takes back the watch.

“Thank you, El.”

“You’re welcome. Now, come on. Dorothy’s gonna be looking for us. Supper is probably almost ready.”

She takes off towards the house, and Diana watches her leave. She places his watch in her coat pocket once again, feels comforted by weight and how it balances her.

Then, she follows El.

* * *

The three of them have a nice dinner together - steak and mashed potatoes and corn. They speak on and off, the sisters telling her stories of Steve when he was young and mischievous, causing trouble on the farm. Letting the cows get loose. Almost ruining one year’s corn crop. So much. So many memories. They spend more time laughing than they do crying, although the tears do come.

She asks if they have pictures, but they don’t, unfortunately. They never owned a camera growing up. The only ones of him that exist are the ones taken by the military, and that one taken of them in Veld. She doesn’t tell them about that one, though. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever see it herself.

By the time they’re done talking, John has come in from his work, and Dorothy prepares a plate for him. After he’s finished, the four play cards until the dark of night settles outside.

“I really should be going,” Diana says, regretfully. She really doesn’t want to leave. She feels closer to him here, and feels a kinship with all of the people here. A sort of bond formed from the light Steve carried with him through life.

“I’ll drive you back to town,” John offers, and stands up, going outside to start the car.

“Will you come back someday?” El asks hopefully, as the three of them rise from the table.

“I think I will, if that’s alright.”

El nods eagerly as she looks to Dorothy for conformation.

“Yes, you may come back,” the woman says. “We’d be happy to have you. I’d offer for you to stay tonight, but we don’t have an extra room. I don’t want to make you sleep on the floor.”

Diana laughs with Dorothy. The truth is, she would sleep on the floor - even in the barn if they insisted - but she doesn’t want to push her luck this time. There will be other occasions, more visits.

She looks at El.

“And I’ll bring a camera with me next time, so that we can take pictures of all the memories we make.”

She expects El to laugh, or smile. But instead, she rushes forward, wrapping her arms tightly around Diana’s waist.

“Thank you so much, Diana,” she murmurs into the fabric of her shirt.

She smiles gently, hugs the girl back, runs a hand over her long blonde hair, smoothing it.

And she feels a tiny bit of the gaping wound in her heart begin to heal.

“Always,” Diana murmurs to her.

“Okay, El,” Dorothy groans playfully, “let her go.”

El squeezes her tighter for a moment before letting her go.

“Why don’t you go get Diana’s coat from the bedroom?” Dorothy asks the girl, and El turns with a drawn-out ‘fine’, taking off down the hall.

“I’m sorry that my Dad couldn’t visit,” Dorothy says as the two walk towards the front door. “He’s just...really sick right now, and Steve’s death has only made it worse.”

“I understand,” she assures her. “I wish him good health and prosperity.”

They reach the entryway, and Dorothy leans against the doorframe.

“El told me about the watch,” she begins. “And I agree that you should keep it. Dad told Steve to die with that thing - to take it down with him. If he knew he was going to die, and gave it to you instead - that means something. He wanted you to have it.”

“Thank you,” Diana says quietly. “You truly don’t know what that means to me.”

Dorothy hesitates, and then reaches and takes her new friend’s hand.

“Be well, Diana.”

“You too,” she tells her, tightening her hand around hers for a moment before letting go.

El reappears with her coat. She shrugs it on, reaching into her pocket, where she finds her two treasures; his watch, and now the rolled-up newspaper with his picture in it.

She walks down the steps to the porch after one more hug from El, across the way to the car, still parked next to the barn. She climbs in, where John is waiting for her. The car starts off down the driveway, and she watches the two sisters standing side by side on the porch until they disappear over the horizon.

“You have a nice visit?” John asks her.

“I did. Very much so.”

She puts her hands in her coat pockets when they pull out onto the road, finds the watch and newspaper of course, but she feels something else in the opposite pocket. She pulls it out, looks down, and smirks.

It’s the piece of paper Etta gave her, with his address. She unfolds the paper, now crunched into a ball, and reads the words and numbers written on it one more time.

Trevor Ranch 1202 Owl Creek Lane Meeteetse, Wyoming

“You find what you were looking for?”

She smiles fondly.

“Yes. I think I did.”

A/N: there might be more chapters to this? i'm not sure though. again, let me know what you think!

#wondertrevweek2020 #wondertrev #wondertrev fic #wondertrevnet #wonder woman #diana prince #steve trevor #steve x diana

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typewriterghcst · 4 years ago

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Title: A Very Small Wish Fandom: The Cat Returns Characters: Baron, Muta, Toto, Haru, plus some OCs Rating: PGish maybe?? Words: 4724 Summary: A pleading request from a parent whose daughter has been cursed by a resentful witch is nothing truly out of the ordinary for the Cat Bureau— in fact, it might be so common so as to be routine— so why does something feel inherently off about this particular one? Notes: Third chapter of six of a Secret Santa gift for @deedee-sunflowers. It’s about here that the chapters start getting a bit long hhh. Tho I think they end up a little shorter again eventually Anyway, the first task. A lot of different influences went into these parts of the story, and I hope they’re not too blatant or distracting, aha ;; Also, I forgot! I drew a very small doodle of the little patchwork creatures which feature in this chapter, if anyone’s interested `~`;;

Ch. 3: The Sown Forest

The Sown Forest is near deathly silent, or… perhaps at least it feels that it should be, but the crunching of the snow under their collective feet and an ever-present rumbling ambiance akin to a distant earthquake means there’s little true silence to be had. And even without that unexpected ambient background, something about the place doesn’t feel quite right. In every direction grow thin, white trees, scattered haphazardly and yet also in just the right formation to make the forest seem far too organized, tidy. Patterned.

No matter where they look, the horizon stretches out over an immeasurable distance, and the white of the sky and that of the level, milky ground meld into one. Only the wispy, bare branches of the trees break up the monotony of the landscape.

“Well,” Baron finally thinks to remark, “The bright red of a holly berry is likely to stick out like a rather sore thumb in this environment, isn’t it?”

“Sure, if you can find the one dumb enough to grow right now,” Muta grumbles, burying his nose into the warmth of the scarf wrapped around his neck and grumpily huddling further into his coat.

“Now, let’s not lose faith so early, Muta. Should we remain positive and keep a cool head about this, we’re sure to succeed.”

“Yeah, that’s what you always say…” More grousing.

“We have only a limited amount of time to triumph over all three of these challenges, and I believe we’ll cover more ground if we split up into groups. Muta, Miss Haru— the two of you start in that direction. Mr. Vanya and I shall take the opposite. Toto, see if you can discern anything from the sky.”

“A berry— even a patch of berries, might be difficult to spot from an aerial view,” Toto responds as a gentle caution. “Even in such a uniform environment.”

“I know, but there’s no harm in trying anyhow.”

Toto nods. Then, more firmly than before, “And how do you propose we find this spot again to inevitably reconvene?”

Ah, bless Toto again, Haru thinks to herself briefly, because Baron looks rather comically bemused by this question, and she and Muta and Toto (if possibly even Vanya, the newcomer that he is) know that this very important piece of information had not occurred to him while putting together his impromptu plan. He gives a pensive noise, one hand going to his chin as the other is planted on his hip.

Eventually, he glances at the trees surrounding them, appearing to have been struck by inspiration, and then removes his hat.

Wordlessly, he hangs it on one of the nearest branches, positioning it just so so it won’t slip off or blow away (though there’s not been even the slightest whisper of wind since they’d arrived).

“Here we are. We’ll all meet back here in an hour— keep an eye on your own footprints. They’re all four of them different, and they should help to distinguish our separate paths.”

Something in Vanya’s gaze gleams as he looks to Baron’s hanging hat, though he ultimately turns away from it to rejoin the group. Instead, he hops like a particularly excited toddler to Haru and Muta (well, Haru, to be more truthful). In one of his paws is what appears to be a skewered snake or worm, which he wastes no time in handing sloppily to the teen, much to her dismay.

“For good luck! This is a traditional Oostal charm good for finding tricky things. And we need all the good luck we can get!”

Haru looks swiftly to Muta for assistance, but the cat is leaning away from her with an expression that speaks to no less than utter baffled disgust. Well. Strained gratitude it is, then, it seems.

“O-Ohh… You’re right, that’s a good idea— th-thank you.”

Vanya beams in a manner eerily reminiscent of the Cat King before scampering back over to his place beside Baron (and it’s only through their long shared history with the cat figurine that Toto and Muta both glean the subtle apprehension in his own expression, that he is mutely waiting in terror for the fox to hand him one of these traditional charms as well). Vanya neglects to do so, however, and Baron’s subdued trepidation is gone almost as soon as it’d revealed itself.

“Remember— one hour. If all else fails, Toto at least should be able to reunite us.”

With that decided, they start off in their opposite directions, Toto taking wing into the sky.

&&&

It’s terribly easy to become disoriented in the Sown Forest, Haru and Muta quickly find out. If not for their own footprints, they swiftly agree they’d have long since been wandering in tight circles and not even realized it. The seamless boundary between land and sky and tree has Haru occasionally feeling rather like she’s walking on a spinning top which also wobbles across the table.

She eventually places the skewered… animal Vanya had given her down beneath a tree, shooting Muta an injured look when he comments on it.

“Looking a gift horse in the mouth, chicky? Didn’t think you had it in ya,” he cracks with a sardonic laugh.

“I’ll pick it back up before we head back to the others! He’ll never even know. B-Because there’s no reason for me to actually carry it with me the whole time we’re looking…”

“I’m just picking on ya. You dropping that thing is gonna do wonders for my nose. Smells like a spoiled fish.” Then, with an annoyed huff, he continues, “I woulda thrown it at him— try to give me some stinky dead thing on a stick—”

“Come on, he’s not that bad,” Haru tries, but she knows she doesn’t sound all that convinced herself. And Muta’s not about to let it go without comment, either.

“You don’t sound so sure to me, kid.”

Haru turns in her spot on her heel, feeling lost and restless in a hard-to-define way. The Sown Forest is devoid of rocks and bushes entirely; it’s nothing but thin scraggly trees, and she would never have imagined before now that to scour such a nebulous landscape might prove to be so exasperating. Where does one search for a pop of color when there are no hiding places?

“...do you get… kind of a weird feeling from Vanya..?”

“Yeah,” Muta doesn’t hesitate to respond sourly. “He’s a tiny, annoying puffball with a bad laugh.”

“N— No, I mean— like an uneasy feeling. Like something is… um, off.”

“Probably ‘cause something is off about him. I don’t trust that puffball.”

The relief Haru gains from such a simple sentence is near indeterminable. She almost leaps in victory.

“I knew it couldn’t be just me! Well, and Toto, maybe, but he was more mum on the whole thing. You know how he is.”

“A gargoyle of few words, yeah, I guess. Real annoying, if you ask me. It’d be a lot easier if everyone just said what they mean instead of hanging on to secrets to keep the peace.”

Distantly, Haru gets the distinct impression this complaint has roots beyond the borders of the current situation, and she’s not sure what to say to it.

Muta, also, seems similarly surprised at himself, and in the end, he chooses to bulldoze past it, circling a few trees in the silence and eventually speaking up, “...Anyway, this Vanya creature pipsqueak is fishy, an’ I don’t like him. I don’t know what he is. Something old. And this place is, too.”

“What about Baron? Do you think he’s being careful enough? He’s wandering around alone with Vanya right now…”

“Eh, Baron’s kind of a soft-hearted ham sometimes, but he’s no peabrain. He’ll be fine.”

“Is that really the best you can do to reassure me..?”

“What? I dunno what to tell you, chicky, it’s the truth.”

“Yeah, but a little more optimism wouldn’t have hurt,” Haru mumbles plaintively.

“If you want, ya could bust on to the scene and rescue him from the puffball to pay him back. Hey, maybe he’ll start crushing on you, then.”

Oh, that calls for a heated blush. Haru stares down at the snow-covered ground of the Sown Forest, hands balled loosely into fists at her sides, though she’s trying desperately to play it all cool. Unfortunately, she’s never been much of an actor.

“He’s my friend— of course I don’t want him to get hurt.”

Muta’s response of the beginnings of a chaffing laugh is not well-received; Haru spins around to protest, but—

Something comes shuffling into their space from behind a nearby tree. And something is all Haru can think to describe it as— smaller even than Vanya and Siree, with a long, snuffling snout and a soft, bean bag body. The tiny creature lacks arms or wings of any kind, giving it an awkward, waddling gait. Missing also are eyes and any noticeable ears.

Yet the strangest thing is that it appears to have been sewn together out of scraps of colorfully-patterned fabric, much like a quilt. (It triggers a memory of her mother’s handiwork, in fact, and the very idea of her mother back at home, in the real world, throws Oostal’s alienness into stark relief. She’s so terribly far from home.)

Muta and Haru watch the little thing waddle between them and then down the way from them in silence before looking back to each other.

“What is it, Muta?” Haru asks. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“What, you never had a stuffed animal before?”

“Stuffed animals don’t walk, Muta,” Haru responds with a huff.

“Eh, shows what you know.”

Whatever response Haru might have had to this lazy red herring abruptly trails off, because the funny little creature, having paused for a brief moment, now drops its floppy snout onto the ground and continues on in a faintly opposite direction, snorting softly the whole way.

“It must be one of the rumored inhabitants of the Sown Forest, right?”

“Yeh. Bet it’ll lead us to those rumored holly berries, too, if we’re careful about it.”

��Now you’re starting to sound like Baron.”

Muta darts out from beside her with a faint derisive groan. “Remind me to scratch you later for that one.”

&&&

Following a colorful (albeit very small) waddling quilt animal through an otherwise blinding array of white snow and sky proves to be astonishingly more difficult than either Muta or Haru would have expected. More than once they somehow lose sight of the thing, only to have to stop and strain their ears for its characteristic snuffling breaths.

“It has two little stick legs and waddles like a sedated duck,” Muta complains at one point when they’ve lost it again. “How do we keep losin’ track of it?!”

“Hold on— Muta, I hear it again. It sounds really close.” Then, after a few seconds spent listening, she adds, “...Actually, it… sounds a little like it’s eating something, doesn’t it?”

This is all Muta seems to need to hear before turning on his heel and starting the opposite way.

“Where are you going?” Haru calls after him.

“I’m out!” He hollers back. “Nothing good comes outta anything that involves weird creatures feasting on stuff, I don’t care what it’s actually— woah!!”

“What is it— Muta, what’s wrong?” Haru dashes in the direction of his voice, fearing the worst. Yet she finds him with little difficulty, and in one piece, poised in the same horrified position a housewife might take were she confronted with a trail of muddy footprints across a formerly pristine linoleum floor.

At his feet, so close he could stretch out a paw and tip the little thing over were he so inclined, is the patchwork animal they’d been struggling to track… and the good luck charm Haru had abandoned earlier, which appears a little worse for the wear.

Muta dashes behind her with an unsteady gait, complaining the entire way. “Ughh, it’s even worse than what I was thinking—!”

“Come on, it’s not that bad,” Haru tries, even as she takes a repulsed step back at the faint sound of tearing meat and flinches. “...it’s still pretty bad, though.”

It’s as they’re watching from a couple paces away that the little thing lifts its ostensible head to… well, scrutinize them, Haru supposes, though it lacks the eyes to do so. Perhaps there is another, hidden sense that allows it to see in a less traditional manner.

Your trade is acceptable.

Haru can’t quite place it, how she Knows that this is what the creature before Muta and her is communicating, as it hadn’t spoken aloud, nor does she hear the words echoing in her mind as one might expect of a bizarre display of telepathy. Yet, still, the resounding statement is clear.

“O-Oh—” She starts, and her voice is like an echoing gunshot in the silence of the forest, which leads her to whisper her next words, “We’re, um, glad you like it.”

Then, as they watch, it drops its head again and continues tearing delicate slivers off the charm, seemingly oblivious to their presence again.

“Well, now what?” Muta says at her feet. He’s still eyeing the patchwork creature with no small measure of antipathy, but he’s at least not subtly hiding behind Haru anymore.

“I guess we… wait for it to finish..?”

“Great.” Muta sits down with an annoyed huff. “Doesn’t it know we’re on a tight schedule here?”

Haru laughs, but it’s tinged with a speck of nervousness.

If not for the unmistakable noise of flapping wings over the ever present hum of the forest, the resultant wind would certainly give Toto’s arrival away— there’s been not even the barest hint of a breeze since they’ve been searching. The crow perches atop a nearby tangle of branches, cocking his head in a distinctly avian fashion at the creature they’ve run across.

“Ha, looks like you’ve found one of the inhabitants.”

“What was your first clue?”

“The quilt creature down there, mostly.”

Muta, again feeling indirectly bested, only grumbles lowly to himself and crosses his arms. Instead, Haru speaks up.

“It’s taking this good luck charm as a trade for the berry. At least, that’s what it sounded like to me. I guess it’ll… um, show us the way once it’s finished..? I’m not sure how it works.”

“Sounds plausible to me. Baron and Vanya are some ways off in that direction,” Toto also adds, gesturing with his wing. “I’ll go to let them know they can stop searching, and bring them here. Be right back!”

Haru and Muta watch him take off, and for a little while until he’s too far in the distance for them to make out, before turning back to their… companions. It seems in their distraction, more of the little quilt animals had arrived, attracted no doubt by the scent of the ‘good luck charm’ Haru had laid down before the tree.

“They really like this icky stuff, don’t they?” Haru muses in an almost-laugh.

Muta pokes one of them on the top of its soft head, causing it to lose its balance and fall to the side. Grudgingly, he sets it rightside up again. “...Guess that little pipsqueak knew what he was talking about, after all.”

&&&

Elsewhere, Toto’s return trip hits an unforeseen, somewhat bizarre snag.

“The Very Pretty Vanya Creature does not fly through the air like an unsolicited blown kiss!”

Baron and Toto share a puzzled, if slightly frazzled, look between them.

“Mr. Vanya, I sympathize if it’s a matter of a… ah, disdain for heights, but the time limit with which we’ve been burdened is perpetually ticking down, and we ought to do all we can to minimize wasted time,” Baron first tries.

“I’m a very careful flier, too. I promise you’ll have your feet on solid ground in no time at all,” Toto also adds.

But Vanya only shakes his head. “It is no matter of fear!” He begins in a manner that says fear is exactly the matter. “It is the principle! Pretty Vanya has no wings. He was meant to stay on the ground.”

It seemed there would be no convincing him. Baron turns to Toto.

“Toto, do you think then that you could fly a little ways overhead and guide us to the others? If we hurry, perhaps we’ll still make good time.”

Before them, Vanya wrings his paws fretfully before finally throwing one arm across his eyes and crying out, “Pretty Vanya must be left behind! He is the millstone dragging everyone else down!”

“N-Now— Mr. Vanya, please, don’t despair—”

“The Most Helpful Bureau must leave me behind,” Vanya insists again, this time without his face hidden, fixing Baron with a determined look. “I said it before, didn’t I? The Pretty Vanya Creature will meet you there in no time, because he is very fast.”

Faced with Vanya’s clear obstinate refusal and the added stress of a ticking clock, it doesn’t take long for Baron to give in, though the veneer of reluctance lingers over him still.

“V… Very well, Mr. Vanya. If you do insist. We’ll go on without you.”

"You will. But there's no reason to worry. It'll be all okay!"

"...Yes. Of course. Be careful."

As they’re flying away, Toto speaks up. “Do you think he’ll make it?”

Baron seems reluctant to answer, gaze distant and unfocused. Coupled with his stilted posture, it gives him the look of someone who is quite diligently trying to avoid jumping to an unpleasant conclusion.

“...It doesn’t matter,” he eventually responds quietly. “I suppose it’s not something which overtly needs his presence.”

“What about covertly?”

“Then we shall hope for the best.”

&&&

True to Toto’s ultimately fruitless attempts at reassurance, it seems only a matter of seconds when they have their feet back on solid ground, spotting Muta and Haru from the air easily enough and touching down just shy of them in the hopes of not startling the by now bristling crowd of tiny quilted animals surrounding the other two.

“Eh? Where’s the pipsqueak?”

“He chose to find his own way to our location,” Baron first explains in his impeccable manner.

“Scared of heights,” is Toto’s more honest addition.

Muta turns back to the quilt animals with an unimpressed scowl. “Figures. Just make us do all the dirty work.”

“Now, Muta, a genuine fear of heights is nothing to brush off.”

“Yeah, if it’s genuine…” Mumbled under his breath, but distinct enough for them all to hear, and that Baron (nor the other two) step in to offer a defense is telling… but also serves at least to inform them all that they’re all four on the same page.

“What about these little guys? Have they brought up the trade or the berry again?”

“No. I think they wanted to finish off the, um… trade first,” Haru says, looking from Baron and Toto to the gathering of quilt animals scattered about before them. She sits crouched on her haunches with her elbows on her thighs, gazing out at their odd companions with the same detached but amiable curiosity one might reserve for a child’s play.

“Can they really stretch out that one sticky charm enough for this many to have a bite of it?” She eventually notes with some incredulous amusement.

“They’re sure gonna try,” Muta snorts.

Finally, as they watch, in the distance it looks as if there are languid waves in the sea of brightly-colored patchwork, divots in the throng that speak to the movement of only a few individuals while the others part to let them pass.

It doesn’t take long; they soon find themselves approached for an apparent audience with a… particularly diminutive individual which separates from the group, one which also appears to have been adorned with a tattered shawl thrown over its body, which trails like a leaden weight after it (though upon closer inspection, this threadbare train is simply part of the little thing’s frame).

Some of the seams on its patchwork appear to be coming undone. Distantly, Haru wonders what will happen should they truly do so, and— quite swiftly derails her own thoughts before they can wander down distressing paths.

Strikingly, also, unlike the others, this one has been endowed with an eye— a single coffee-colored iris in startlingly familiar, human-shaped white sclera. Situated somewhat strangely off-centered atop its tapered, drooping head, it stares vacantly ahead, half-lidded.

The four of them feel themselves scrutinized by this seeming elder; even Muta has no complaint to offer in an attempt to hurry the process along.

Only one.

Haru can’t quite place it, how she Knows that this is what the little creature before them all is communicating, as it hadn’t spoken aloud, nor does she hear the words echoing in her mind as one might expect of a bizarre display of telepathy. Yet, still, the resounding caveat is clear.

Baron nods stiffly, appearing to have been caught off-guard in the same way the rest of them had. “Yes. Just the one.”

The quilt-like creature responds with some erratic, floppy movements that vaguely resemble an affirmative nod before placing the tapered end of its cloth snout into Baron’s hands, where it drops a single round, bright red berry. It’s about the size of a particularly plump blueberry, though it seems quite larger in Baron’s gloved hands. Seemingly satisfied, the little animal turns then, and begins to waddle away.

“Thank you,” Haru thinks to call after it.

Not too far into the future, they will all four find themselves remembering this particular phrase and wonder furiously why such an innocuous one seemed to have such a profound effect upon the Sown Forest’s minuscule inhabitants. For now, however, it’s little more than a curiosity, when the creature abruptly stops with an accompanying jerk, and then goes quite still.

The others surrounding them, too, copy this one’s motions.

“Uhh, I don’t like the look of that—” Muta starts, but he’s rather abruptly cut off by a hoarse, low-pitched bark which echoes through their surroundings. The four of them instinctively back up in alarm, a sentiment which only grows upon witnessing the little things begin convulsing, tossing their heads into the air and then back down, all the while emitting those same short roars like a baleful staccato.

“That’s loud—”

“I think it’s time we took our leave,” Baron says (he makes a motion to steady his hat, only to belatedly realize he’d left it behind). He’d liked that hat.

No sooner have they turned on their collective tails and fled that the Sown Forest’s inhabitants scuttle and crawl after them in whatever way they can, and despite their obvious disadvantages, the little things are startlingly adept at keeping up with them. Haru doesn’t have the nerve to give their pursuers the thorough, lingering look she wants, too intent on making sure her pounding steps remain even and sound, but the tight-knit mob’s thunderous pursuit is impossible to mistake. It’s not long before panicked discouragement sets in. To everyone’s surprise, it’s Baron who speaks up first.

“We won’t be outrunning them on foot—”

“Good thing we have a gargoyle chicken, then, isn’t it?!” Muta snaps, then calls to said ‘gargoyle chicken,’ “Hey, birdbrain—!”

“Toto’s many good and admirable things, Muta, but I doubt even he is strong enough to carry a full-grown human—”

Haru, overhearing this, burns with the inclination to wildly apologize, all too aware of the cracks of the trees and the deafening crunch of packed snow behind them. She bows her head in remorse, feeling fervently in this moment that her decision to tag along really had been a mistake. She’s so close to contemplating how far she might get should she separate from the group and divert the creatures away… when she notices something rather strange.

“Wait—” Haru gasps, glancing down to herself in a bewildered fashion, so much so that for a fleeting second she stops in her tracks and has to be tugged along by Baron. “I’m not the same size I was— when did I get this small—?!”

Baron sounds just as bewildered when he answers, though he at least moves past it, “Let’s not kick a gift horse, now— Toto!”

“Got it!”

If Toto at all struggles with the effort to carry all three of them, even if Haru has been unexplainably shrunken, then he’s quite gifted with hiding it. He takes off into the air with them, far above the swarming quilt creatures, with no less agility than he usually does, and Baron and Haru spend the next few moments surveying the horde raptly.

“Ya just had to thank them, didn’t you?” Comes Muta’s complaint from his not altogether eager spot in Toto’s talons.

“I was just trying to be polite!” Haru counters just as plaintively, but even she sounds at least a little remorseful. “What kind of place takes words of gratitude as an offense..?”

“They don’t show any signs of slowing down,” Baron notes.

“Are they really gonna chase us all the way to the border?! They barely have the legs to run! You really steamed them with that gratitude BS, chicky.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Haru laments.

“We know you didn’t, Haru, “ Toto tries to reassure.

“Ah, it’s Vanya,” Baron says with a nod in the fox’s direction; he looks quite small (smaller than usual, that is) from their height, rapidly looking between them in the air and the horde of… well, what look to be furious blankets swarming the forest below them. He’s motioning frantically to them to come closer, to land as quickly as they can.

“Is he crazy?! There’s no way we’re landing that close to the forest— if he doesn’t make a break for it, he’s gonna get smothered, too,” Muta says.

Seemingly as an exasperated response to their stubbornness, Vanya points to the forest behind them with an agitated zealousness, or, perhaps more specifically, the perimeter which is teeming with untold numbers of the tiny quilt creatures. The vast majority of them pace behind the line of trees, fretful and overwrought; the unfortunate few that have accidentally tumbled beyond it lie scattered and twitching on the snow-covered ground like marooned fish.

“What’s wrong with them..?”

“Looks like they can’t go beyond the trees,” Toto guesses.

When they land, still uneasy from the agitated mass of patchwork continuing to obsessively tread back and forth just a scant stone’s throw away, Vanya is swift to bound over to them, practically throwing himself at Baron and wrapping his arms around the Creation. If Baron had appeared disconcerted at the mere possibility of being given one of Vanya’s messy luck charms, he’s downright alarmed when being in no uncertain terms ‘glomped’ by the same creature.

“You made it! Pretty Vanya was worried!”

“What’s wrong with the forest’s inhabitants, Vanya?”

Vanya lets Baron go (much to his evident relief) and cants his head in thought. “The Sown Forest exists as a powerful transformative milieu. Stay too long and one becomes part of it. The inhabitants can’t leave it.”

“What will happen to the ones that accidentally fell out of bounds?” Haru asks, glancing to the small number of quilt animals still lying pitifully just out of reach of the border of trees.

“They will die,” Vanya answers with a shrug. “Eventually.”

“But that’s awful! Can’t we just push them back into the forest..? Will they go back to normal then?”

“Yes.” Vanya sounds confused.

“Then that’s what I’ll do,” Haru says, starting for the border with a marked lack of hesitation. “There aren’t that many— it shouldn’t take long, should it?”

“Even less with assistance,” Baron agrees shortly, following after her.

“I guess we’re doing this now.” Muta, as well, trails after the two with a sullen grumble.

“Cheer up, kitty, exercise is good for you.”

“Don’t make me cook you.”

Behind them, Vanya, still holding Baron’s hat as if it were a priceless artifact, watches them leave with a hard to define look, moving just a foot or two from side to side (but never so much as a half-step forward). His tail twitches and flutters in a manner quite reminiscent of an inquisitive squirrel, with the searching mien to accompany it, but he ultimately says nothing and seems to content himself with killing time.

#the cat returns #secret santa

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janiedean · 5 years ago

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You've been very critical of Cersei, especially in response to Tumblr often defending her in more ways than she probably should. In the same vein, do you think Daenerys is as bad or ambitious as Cersei? Are they meant to be parallels or foils?

I... don’t know if it’s like that for various reasons starting with the fact that cersei is a villain and dany is not and I think that what they have as parallels isn’t really where grrm means to go at, but I’ll try to give the most possible objective answer.

premise: dany is a character I really don’t care much either way about and I don’t remember 60% of her chapters (like, 90% of adwd and for the rest I only remember decently the got stuff and half of asos plus the vision at the end of acok) and I haven’t reread them in ages unless I needed to because a) she’s really not on my radar, b) that’s not the most engaging storyline to me so take my opinions for what they are.

that said:

I don’t think they’re nowhere near the same level because dany actually cares about other people which cersei does not;

also, there’s the angle where imvho dany wants the throne more because of her name/legacy/because viserys wanted it and she grew up with that toxic environment and she’s not actually moving forward bc basically she’s taken on herself what viserys wanted, but if you look at it... tbh I think dany just wants to get back to the house with the red door cuddling her lizards which is also why i think she’s not eventually getting the throne even if she won’t die at the end but that’s beyond the point, while everything cersei does is to get power and fuck everyone else in the way;

which is the other fundamental difference ie cersei doesn’t gaf about anyone else that’s not herself and doesn’t see people’s needs as something she needs to care about, while dany actually does care about other people - admittedly she gets caught up in selfrighteousness about that a lot for that but like... it’s not as if she freed the slaves for that, she really does believe in her cause/in helping others;

now, the thing they have in common imvho that I can see as a pseudo-parallel is that neither of them is actually good at ruling - or better, cersei is plain bad because she thinks that she’s her father and she’s not and she doesn’t listen to other people while dany has good intentions but doesn’t have one single adviser who’s actually trained for politics and is bad at seeing the great picture never mind diplomacy never mind that she hasn’t grasped the concept that you can’t just dismantle an entire established system with fire and blood even if it’s wrong (ie: everything that happens post-conquer of mereen is basically the realistic consequences of swooping in with dragons without looking at the entire situation around the place you’re supposed to conquer), which means that cersei’s stint at ruling and dany’s are both not good (and if adwd/affc had been one single book probably it would have been a more blatant parallel than it is with the books separated) so like... they could have been foils in that sense but if they had been in the same book it would have been more obvious but I mean... at worst it would have shown that dany isn’t a good ruler but means well while cersei isn’t a good ruler and.. well, means well for herself;

that said dany’s ambition, as stated before, is her brother’s ambition more than hers and it’s more about her birthright than what she actually wants, so i don’t think you can compare it with cersei’s because cersei again wants power for herself and like... she does want that;

I don’t think dany and cersei are even remotely on the same level morally because as stated dany cares about other people and cersei doesn’t;

also, you can dislike dany or not care, but... she’s written to be sympathetic, while cersei is not, in the sense that while you can find sympathetic someone the narrative doesn’t present as such and viceversa (for example with dany I’m not particularly interested so like... I care but I don’t relate to her nor feel anything that much specific except that I don’t dislike her but that’s it even if she’s written to be relatable/sympathetic while with cersei people see traits they find relatable/sympathetic so they empathize with her even if the narrative is very clear about how cersei is a negative character, which ofc is their prerogative bc everyone feels about characters in their own way), objectively dany is not coded negatively even if she has faults while cersei is coded negatively because she’s a villain and there’s nothing in her chapters that suggests that she’s going to change or that she wants to or that she would care for that, so ‘as bad as cersei’ is.... not correct because they’re nowhere near the same level when it comes to their personalities and they don’t act for the same reasons;

also: re cersei my problem is that people excuse everything she does on account of things that each single woman in these books has to deal with but somehow cersei is untouchable even when she’s done far worse than most other characters and without even taking dany into account (bc I think discourse on dany is extremely polarized in fandom and I don’t agree with either the FLAWLESS HERO side nor the OMG SHE’S THE VILLAIN side - I think she’s trying to do good but being a queen is not her life call and she’s there to deconstruct very specific tropes while being written sympathetically, so I’m like... not touching that, but people do criticize dany even if 80% of the time it’s not for reasons that are in the text but nvm), but like... if you objectively compare what catelyn has done textually and what cersei has done textually and see what fandom thinks of either in general it’s obvious that there is a strong double standard and I’m personally extremely tired of being classified as some kinda internalized misogynist because I don’t like cersei when people shit on catelyn for actual misogynistic reasons (because sorry but ‘she’s such a bitch she should have gone back home to her smaller children why did she even think she could help out robb’ when cat’s smarter than 90% of the other povs combined is a goddamned misogynist argument and guess what half of this fandom happily partakes in it to say one, and it’s not even the start of it). like, my issue with cersei is that people don’t discuss her critically nor accept that she’s a bad guy objectively - subjectively they can think whatever they want, but if you’re selling me your analysis as meta/STUFF THAT’S IN THE TEXT then it should be in the text and passing cersei as some feminist hero that is crushing the patriarchy is not what the text says;

I don’t have 99% of the same issues with dany bc as stated I don’t go there, idc about her and I disagree anyway with 98% of the takes I see concerning dany anyway but at least no one says that if you dislike dany you automatically don’t give a damn about women but that’s another problem;

but tldr the way dany is discussed in fandom is not the same cersei is discussed in fandom and I disagree with both discourses bc I think dany’s is too polarized in two opposite ways that don’t cover it imvho and cersei is polarized in one direction and that is my issue with cersei discourse basically;

I don’t think these two are comparable on a moral scale bc as stated dany has morals and cersei... doesn’t, on a narratively sympathy scale because grrm wants you to sympathize with dany at least to a level while not hiding that she has faults same as everyone in these books while cersei is written as a straight-up negative character that has possibly relatable reasons for being like that and which people can see themselves in, but she’s not meant to be someone the story sympathizes with - you’re meant to feel sorry for her at some point (I guess because I’m not the right person to ask that question) and you can absolutely find her relatable, but we’re not talking about people with the same set of morals, values and life targets anyway so tldr the answer is that at most they’re foils in the way grrm explores how they both fail at their first try at ruling (and for cersei most likely the last) but dany’s meant to be sympathetic, cersei isn’t;

I think they’re parallels in that sense but tbf I think that cersei has quiiite more foiling going on with cat in the sense of characters you contrast with each other who are starting from similar premises, and with dany I think it all begins and dies with their being queens but tbf I also don’t think it’s dany’s endgame and cersei is dying because she’s power-hungry so if dany lives renouncing it and cersei dies embracing it it’s definitely a foil for that, but like... they also aren’t directly connected by the narrative and I absolutely don’t think dany is younger and more beautiful which would actually connect them, idt they’re actually ever meeting, so... there is a parallel/foil but just on that one aspect. for the rest they’re wildly different imvho.

... I hope it made sense. XD

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #ch: daenerys targaryen #anti-cersei lannister #anti-cersei #ch: cersei lannister #like... i wouldn't give af about cersei half as much as I do if fandom didn't shove her down my throat as something she's not *shrug*#ch: catelyn stark #i guess #Anonymous #ask post

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afanoftheglassscientists · 5 years ago

Text

The Glass Scientists Art-Style Changes

Hey yeah sorry but I saw someone complain about how the webcomic’s art style is jarring in the later chapters and that the noses are bad because they’re big and I’m back in full salt mode WHO WANTS SOME TEA!?

@glass-scientists your art-style has only gotten more beautiful as the webcomic continues and you work extremely hard on the comic by yourself and I am amazed you kept working on this for more than four years now while in a career and I hope you’ll be able to do so for the foreseeable future. When I comment on how your art changed please know that I’m not doing it to critique you. Okay you don’t have to read more of this I just wanted to be the 156th person to let you know you’re doing great.

ONE - The noses have always been prominent on the characters’ art design and having a big noses does not automatically make it look ugly. Admittedly there are artists out there who draw very ugly noses for very ugly reasons, but Sabrina Cotugno is not and never has been one of those types of artists. Yes, Jekyll’s nose is bigger, but is not the end-all, be-all take from his design changes.

Here’s him from Ch.1 Pg. 15.

And here’s him from Ch.7 Pg. 22

(And no, I do not know why the latter two picture are bigger.)

As you can see, the nose in the earlier chapters looks smaller, but Jekyll’s face is also a lot more...soft? Like think of ceramic pieces. You start out with soft clay and you mold it into the shape you want (but don’t forget to wedge don’t want it to explode in the oven) but then after the clay firms up a little you’re ready to carve it and give it a more pronounced form. That’s what happened in the later chapters: Jekyll’s nose, the shape of his jawline, his sideburns, hair and even his eyebrows has become sharper and more distinct. His nose isn’t just an attachment like a Mister Potato Head, its a part of him. To give him a smaller nose would mean changing his whole character profile.

TWO - Like Clay, Art Changes. Admittedly I was taken aback by the change in the comic’s art-style as well, but that will happen to literally any long-form manga or comic. Unless you’ve been doing comics for literal decades your art is going to change, because you’re going to change, and what you want from your art and the characters you create are going to change. Look at Bluechair by Shen on WEBTOON: while his artstyle has solidified these past few years his earlier comics are unrecognizable, because he’s been working on his Bluechairs comic for five years, often updating two or three times a week, and is currently on Episode 536 of Bluechairs, but technically he currently has 706 of them under the Bluechairs page. His comics are like the Sunday Newspaper kind of comics, so I’m not asking you to read his stuff starting from the beginning (in fact please don’t try to read it all at once: his early stuff is pretty good but let me remind you he has SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIX COMICS OF STUFF) but maybe read a couple of them from the beginning and then read some of his latest ones.

So yeah, its not unexpected from comics to change in style, either slowly due to how the artists gains a more experienced hand or by an intentional shift in art direction. Sabrina was in the latter camp, due to the fact that she felt the earlier character designs was too much like a Disney Princess Line-Up, which she mentioned in a page description that I cannot find but I know was real.

Honestly I really do like the more recent pages. I disagree that they’re less vibrant, because I think removing the high glossy sheen made the characters even more distinct from each other. Before the shift in artstyle I felt like everyone was getting the same brand of hair gel. Hot take coming, but the character who most benefits from this shift is Rachel, who’s been looking gorgeous these last few chapters.

THREE - Sabrina Cotugno has been working this story, these characters and the art of this webcomic mainly by herself, while still working a job as a cartoon director for multiple shows and is currently working on a project for Disney. She does not have a lot of time on her hands to fix mistakes and asking her to change things or give her “Advice” on her art is...I won’t say unwanted because that’s up to her as to whether or not she’d use that language, but I will say she probably doesn’t need your advice on how to draw art when she has already worked in professional spaces as a storyboard artist AND as a director.

Plus I’m going to be upfront here, and this is going to sound harsh: Do not fucking nitpick and tear apart content made independently unless warranted by offensive language or imagery, because not only is it unhelpful it is just plain mean. Yes, Sabrina has worked on shows before, but The Glass Scientists is not made by a group of people working together, with producers and press and editors to back them up. This is entirely her work. She is spending her own free time making this. This webcomic is hours, days, weeks, years in the making, in the wake of hot days, sickness, travelling, other deadlines and dying plants.

And to turn around and say “Oh the way you do the art now isn’t as good?” Fuck off with that. I’m not Sabrina, so I get to be mean here - You are allowed to admit you dislike these changes, but sending the artist messages directly telling them of your dislikes is an absolute garbage thing to do. Especially when you yourself are not an artist.

Like Sergeant Brokenshire has a beard in one panel but loses it in the next few pages. Cue the Cinema Sins ding noise I guess. Okay, that happens sometimes, she doesn’t have an editor to correct. Am I going to directly send her messages letting her know she did her webcomic wrong? Fuck no. She probably has been sent hundreds of “helpful” messages about it already, and guess what? She doesn’t have the time to correct every mistake because she has a job.

Of course if Sabrina or any independent artist does something horrifically offensive or even just something that makes you uncomfortable you are absolutely allowed to air your grievances. But so far Sabrina has been good so I’ve got nothing to complain about, and the asks she gets that do have issues with the webcomic she answers with grace.

So basically this wandered completely off from the nose discussion and into the ethics of fandoms for independently made webcomics, but anyway long story short.

The Glass Scientists is not yours and its not mine. It belongs to Sabrina Cotugno, and its hers to change how she sees fit. Get over that and enjoy the webcomic as it is and you’ll have a much better experience.

Sorry to sound preachy there. I’m not trying to act like the Fandom Police and I’m not trying to fight Sabrina’s battles for her. I just see a lot of bad fucking behavior toward other independent artists and I don’t want to see it here. I have been that anon who “critiques” or gives “helpful” advice to artists who had far more experience than me, so its not like I’m pretending to be above it all here. I’ve buried many a blogs because of my shameful past.

Most of this Fandom has been wonderful. Let’s keep it that way while it lasts.

Anyway that espresso really did a number on me. I’m about to crash and I’m getting the awful sense of deja-vu here. Sorry for being so salty on Fandom lately, I won’t do it again unless I see some real trouble. This has accidentally become a Midnight Post, so go to bed!

...Oh wait one more thing: PLEASE DON’T REPOST FULL PAGES OF THE WEBCOMIC!!! Access to the official page is not hard and despite a few hiccups (which is not Sabrina’s fault but the webpage itself) we have been able to see all of the webcomic. There is no need to repost the whole page and on Sabrina’s FAQ she specifically asked people not do this. If you want to read each new page and don’t want to refresh the website twenty time on Monday morning you can always follow her twitter or her blog “arythusa” where she posts a link to each new page after it uploads. In fact starting tomorrow I’ll be sure to reblog these posts to make sure you have a link available to click.

Okay now good night.

#tgs #the glass scientists

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unproduciblesmackdown · 5 years ago

Note

let's see those Prime Numbers for the ask meme

2) favorite albums?

well i was Ready for kesha’s album Warrior to come out in iiii think it was the end of 2012 or early 2013?? i snuck out to that tour in dc that summer also. totally solid album and it was fun to have something so fun during a totally Not Fun period lol. i was also pretty into owl city at the exact same time lmao, that’s Blatantly for when you’re depressed lol...and i also eventually saw that guy on tour when a new album came out in 2015, and that was fun too, and was Enjoying Myself a factor in the tipping point of “ah jeez i gots 2 get outta here” that i had in the next month? maybe! and uhhh i listened a lot to the phoenix te amo album. that one wasnt tied to anything at all but i have heard it So much. super short and also rock solid and relistenable. and then here we are and the bmc obcr is a gift to the world b/c a) it exists and b) Cuz It All Slaps and c) it’s so fun to either sing or dance along, or cry along if it’s the agtikbi reprise and d) lgw... and e) all the eternal, well-mixed wroland vocals

3) favorite memes?

oh god lmao idk......real earlier 10s stuff was the I Say Hey he-man meme, and the “that really rustles my jimmies” meme which was real underrated......there’s been plenty of Memes where i’ve been like “this one is funny to me Every Time” but of course now looking back on it it’s like. what’s a meme??? Vine

(skipping 5 & 11 cuz that’s the Entirety of someone else’s ask and i don’t wanna just have to scrap theirs completely and i’ll get to it next!!)

11) favorite fanarts?

you know what, there’s continuously been a ton of amazing fanart where i’m like, i’m so glad i’m seeing this, & this is Artistic Fuel, and marge simpson anime has really been just this Standout Experience lmao like......idk for as Inspiring as it is, there’s only a couple things i’ve drawn that are Directly inspired, but i just flip for it all the time and like, it’s supremely expressive and like, comics that aren’t chronological but more like a Collage Of a Moment / Concept which i think is super cool and also i love when stuff reminds me that it doesn’t have to look ~super cleaned up~ to look great.

13) favorite people you know?

oh god this one really got out of control lol i started like, talking about everyone ever from this past decade. so for Convenience i’m interpreting this as “people *i* know, but they don’t know me” so that i can cheat and say will roland, voted person of the year 2019. by extension, essential supporting crew who helped us reach this point, like john simpkins or joe iconis. leave it at that!! it’s 5am and you know i’m not lying. who knew where going “wow, This guy” in late 2018 would have so much Value.

17) a fandom you wish more people were in/you had more people to talk to about?

oof hmm.......amnesia tdd didn’t really have a “fandom” even though it obviously got a lot of attention, it’dve been fun if it had though lol. it’s tricky to answer this one cuz i always prefer like, smaller fandoms and/or finding the Niche or some other way of just like, interacting with a small corner of things, so i’m never like wow god damn wish i’d been absolutely in the thick of it with this thing. i’ve been in Corners n Niches and it’s been fine by me, really

19) a fandom that you had the best time in?

HMM lol.........marble hornets sure was fun but like, a lot of that was just the content itself and not necessarily The Fan Experience, tho i sure got a lot out of it in a ton of ways. i mean tbh that’s true of each thing i’ve really Gotten Into majorly, i go hard af and then walk out the other side with these #connections or #experiences like whoa where’d these come from lol!! but really like, overall, i’m probably having the best time right now. the “fandom” is basically just our agenda lmao but like i said i’m always having the best time when it’s a pretty niche deal, And the sheer variety of Contents n Characters to draw from here is super nice, and the fact that it’s like, oh yeah and i’m finally recognizing this should’ve-been-obvious entire Passionne i’ve had since always, and that’s great too, and like, also just having the Variety Of Live / Current Unfoldings that go down.....like, everyone havin fun with the Joe Iconis Xmas Xtrav was entirely great. and just the Engagement level is basically the best, cuz like there’s the times where maybe i’ll get a zillion notes and that’s definitely fun in its own way but i always enjoy just the way smaller amount of ppl who are Particularly Enthusiastic, and like, there’s times where like, maybe i’m *technically* in this larger circle of ppl but like, totally more of like a Tangent or peripheral to that circle or whatever lol........this feels like a really solid balance of like, being sorta in this orbit of people in a chill way, but also definitely the direct interactions Existing, which is always important lol but hasn’t always been a constant throughout my Fandom Experiences at all

23) who were you at the beginning of this decade?

2009-2010 was a real distinct year lol i was in my second year of college in the middle of my teens, when i’d hardly really been getting to Explore My Interests Freely up to that point and still wasn’t, but all of a sudden it’s like goddamn i have to figure out my major???? and i’m like, obviously in the middle of only just now Really getting to figure out my identity in this deeper and more genuine way, thanks to being lucky enough to Live On Campus and be away from home like, 2/3 of the year, but i was just like, oh god i’m in Stress Hell now all the time cuz like. i’m trying to figure out my whole thing and what my ~Career~ should be and i just have no idea but am like, trying super hard all the time lol it was not successful and i was just really stressed about it all the time. i was def quieter back then.....pretty lonely at the time, i did not get into mh and gain the presence of any Online Friends until late 2010, and i hadn’t yet been sort of accepted by a small faction of theatre people via my roommate’s connections.....i wasn’t at all Out yet, and was def In Progress of figuring it all out.....i didn’t have nearly the Self-Esteem i have now lmao, it was Not a great time and in a lot of ways ‘09-’10 was the start of a downturn into Worse Than Usual Times, though in Other ways it was definitely an upturn lol like. the latter related to stuff that was important to me / who i am, the former tied to the situations i was in and the godawful morale that resulted

29) a time when the worst case scenario happened but you pulled through?

well by the end of 2012 i had my Wrath Parent deluxe mad at me big time, AND i was stuck at home all of thee time with that (not at all hours but. every day.) it was terrible!!! tf was going on in 2013, cuz that shit was definitely like, a gross blur of a lot of indistinct misery. and then, relatedly, when it was so shitty in 2015 that i was like fantastic, i am so officially sick of this i’m outta here. i revisited some Misery Posts from that period lately for someone stranger on twitter’s project or something, and boy i was having a bad time Summer Of ‘15 lol, things not getting better at home And a job that was so shitty that it was like..................bye. lol. and then i spent a year living out of a minivan. which was real lucky in ways b/c like. infinitely better than if i had not had that minivan. and when that broke down i was also then lucky enough to have this friend who was relatively nearby who’d also been willing to just like, set me up to Not have to ask the lgbt center where that trans-friendly forest zone a couple cities over was. nothing as dramatic as it could’ve been, fortunately

31) a time you were scared?

hmmm when leaving The Parents Home overnight, that was intimidating. bit of completely jumping into the unknown there, and also like, when you spend your lifetime assuming that Someone’s Arbitrary Wrath will be uponst you always, it’s hard to shake that sense of dread and doom, like ah jeez i am really potentially bringing hell on myself here........and like i mentioned with Start Of The Decade, there was just a ton of fear there all the time lol, trying to figure out virtually overnight The Whole Of Who I Am And What I Want when i’d only just even gotten to start......also i wanna say i maybe came out in 2011?? and i sort of also felt obligated to come out to my parents also (plus i think i was giving them like, one last chance to surprise me and be decent and kind of Grow Up themselves even tho i was the like, 16 y.o.) which yknow, kids you do not have to come out to anyone at all. someone was talking the other day abt how they didn’t think lgbtq “discourse” had evolved as much as you’d hope over the past decade, but idk about that, it's only a little bit of a wildly complex topic, and for starters Online Trans “Discourse” of a decade back was wayyyyyy in a vastly different place than it is now, leaps and strides really. so the way to ~really~ do it was presented kind of more rigidly i think. anyways i did it via email and was incredibly stressed to even open the reply a couple days later lol......which ended up being really weird and vague, and then there was a phone call where no one brought it up, and the only result was increased ire and resentment :( ........and then there was still like, cops encounters! near or not-as-bad-as-they-could’ve-been vehicular collisions! but tbh generally my reaction to the latter was underwhelming, except for one particular time when i was a passenger and also tense af for the rest of the ride. that’s it for Immediate fear really lol......oh wait one time i was at this decent sized Convention Panel Event and when i’m nervous i can Only talk more (it’s possible!!) and i snuck into line for the q&a and Right when i got to the mic (intimidating) they were like oop we’re low on time, lightning round!! :’] that was obviously more just a crapton of l’anxiete

37) a fashion that fell out of style that you wish would make a resurgence?

were Gladiator sandals this decade? the strappy deals that like, went up the ankles / calves? that was in fashion for a year or two and i’m into it. i like sandals and that kind of drama

41) something you learned a lot that not a lot of other people might know about?

i don’t know that i learned way a lot of anything that’s real in-depth knowledge and niche lore.........i have learned Nothing

43) an important relationship (of any kind) you had?

i had???? lmao well either way let’s say current relationships count and like, pretty much everyone in my Sphere i value a lot! i never like, have or have had a ~close~ ring of ppl around me lol like i thought it was lucky if i talked to someone Every Day (and not at all the Usual thing) and now it’s more likely that i talk to two people every day and maybe that sounds sarcastic but it’s not at all lol. i know my social stats aren’t impressive but i so appreciate what i get to enjoy and have. and other Connections might be way more like, we are friendly acquaintances, we talk on rare occasions, we haven’t talked at all in ages, we talk but only to trade cute pics of cats, Etc etc, but i seriously do appreciate all of everyone who’s cool who i get to interact with in any way and like, be in each other’s spheres and Not just like, absolutely on nobody’s radar. also obviously soph you are here in that list in case i wasn’t implying it good enough lol it is 5am and god knows deciphering what i say at any time can be its own challenge.....ur Epic Highs and Lows of bmc 3.0 is so good lmao

#hell yeah tysm now also i should go for Passing Outs #(where you pass out like knocking out)#thank you Three Other Asks i see and appreciate it as well #oh wait shit four!!!#lol #it's 5:20am bed time bitch all day hit the hay #i forget what i say here i've been on and off doing whatever for the past 5 hrs obviously lmao #nothingunrealistic1

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thecloserkin · 6 years ago

Text

fic rec: We Are All We Have by inkstainedwretch

fandom: A Series of Unfortunate Events

pairing: Violet Baudelaire/Klaus Baudelaire

word count: 10k, oneshot

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: Yes

Is it endgame: Yes

Bottom Line: stunning, beautiful, perfect, cleared my skin & watered my crops

It starts back in the attic of Olaf’s house, where Violet begs Klaus to kiss her so Count Olaf won’t be her first kiss. I have no shame when it come to the “I want my brother to be my first” trope— let the record reflect that I think it should be mandatory to include it in every single incest fic. She wants to counter the nonconsensual vileness of Olaf’s touch with the memory of someone she loves holding her, and there isn’t anyone she loves or trusts as much as Klaus.

Her tears, to her unbearable shame, were not for the plight of her poor sister Sunny, tied up and hanging in a cage that looked structurally unsound and incredibly drafty. They were not for Klaus … They were, in fact, for herself.

If this isn’t Peak Violet lol noticing the cage is structurally unsound. She actually feels guilty that she’s crying for herself—can you imagine? She berates herself for being selfish, for agonizing only 50% over her siblings’ mortal peril and the other 50% over how her first kiss—the thing that every girl fantasizes about from the age of, like, four—is going to be with a serial murderer who if you read between the lines is clearly depicted as sexually repulsive?? (Neil Patrick Harris playing Count Olaf in the Netflix series kind of throws a wrench in the “sexually repulsive” part of the equation, however.) So that’s how it starts, Klaus kisses her to help a sister out. Only problem is, FEELINGS are precipitated. Klaus does what he does best, which is rationalize. It’s all hormones, he decides:

There were very few people he came into regular contact with, at least now, that he found pleasing to look at. Nevertheless, he felt a bit sick, sometimes, because Violet would catch him looking, and their eyes would meet for one terrifying moment, and then she would look away first.

Klaus and Violet are such a seamless team that they can exchange thoughts with a glance, which means it’s not like he can hide it when he’s checking out her slammin’ body. This is the part where they’re obviously hot for each other and repressing it. God how do these kids even manage to function when there is SO. MUCH. UST. Here is when it hits him like a thunderclap that he’s in love with her—Klaus being Klaus, of course he frames it as the difference between “children’s cartoons” vs. “encyclopedia entries that begin with the letter I”

He didn’t dare think about how long it had been since he’d truly walked on solid ground.

Because if he loves Violet that way, the wrongdirtybad way, then he has to reevaluate everything he believes in. Meanwhile the two of them have been co-parenting for so long that:

Klaus wondered if Sunny would remember their parents, when she was older. Some base, sinful part of his mind wondered if she would remember no mother but Violet, no father but himself.

He jerks awake from a nightmare and she’s immediately there to comfort him, and he’s pressing kisses into her hair and then they’re kissing for real OH MY GOD i’m shrieking incoherently. You know what else I am 1000% here for? MASTURBATING IN THE DARK WHEN YOU THINK THE OTHER PERSON IS ASLEEP. Wow this fic actually makes Klaus’s near-sightedness germane to the plot, insomuch as he wishes he could see Violet’s face better as she’s having an orgasm. You know when else Klaus’s nearsightedness was germane to the plot? The Miserable Mill, which is possibly the shippiest of the 13 books. Here, I dare you to read this passage and tell me it does not deadass nail Lemony Snicket’s authorial tone, at once confiding and sardonic:

The elephant in question is nearly always a figurative one, and usually takes the form of something visual, such as a person with a very bad haircut or a cast around one leg. The elephant is not talked about out of politeness, or perhaps out of concern for the cast-wearing person’s feelings. Klaus and Violet, however, were dealing with a very different elephant, one that was not made of a single thing, a single event. In fact, it would be better to say that they were not forgetting a single elephant in the room, but a whole herd of smaller, miniature elephants, that ran and trumpeted and played fun, tiny elephant games all across the room. The elephants, in this case, were having a great deal more fun than Klaus and Violet were. They were made of thoughts, feelings, and strongest of all, memories. One for the warmth in Violet’s chest each time Klaus smiled at her, one for each time Klaus had awoken from a nightmare to find Violet at his bedside, one for how well they fit together in the trundle bed that had been wheeled into the closet, Sunny tucked between them.

Jesus Christ if they would just bone already everything would be hunky dory. Jk it wouldn’t. The three of them are currently living in Justice Strauss’s closet while the paperwork goes through for Violet’s emancipation.

Before all of this (though what “all of this” was, he wasn’t sure), she hadn’t ever hesitated to sit close to him, to rest a hand on his leg from time to time, lean on his shoulder as they read a book together. She was hesitating now because the meaning behind the action would be different, now. She was afraid to be too close to him, because now it was wrong, and if they tried to make it normal, it meant they were wrong.

“I don’t,” he took another deep, deep breath, “I don’t think this is going to go away.”

“I love you,” she said, sighed it despondently against his shoulder, as though she were confessing some terrible crime.

After all the shit the universe has put these two cinnamon rolls through, it’s plain enough that their love is the purest thing about them!!! It’s the world that’s broken, not Violet and Klaus. Also, how poignant is that line “I don’t think this is going to go away”? Because you can be sure they’ve tried everything to make it go away, and have been singularly unsuccessful.

“I’m so glad it’s you,” she sighed, and then she gave a surprised cry that turned into a soft, almost pleading moan.

Yessss they finally have sex. Plus, Count Olaf dies offstage:

He’d been dead for a while – “A harpoon gun, really?”, and Jacquelyn had pictures that Klaus didn’t look at but Violet did, because she had to know, and Klaus trusted her eyes.

So as soon as Jacquelyn and Justice Strauss wander away from the dinner table Sunny casually asks her siblings when they’re planning to get married. Dead silence. Sunny is a perceptive child, and the after-sex glow must have lit Violet and Klaus up like beacons. The two of them are stammering nonsense like “it’s illegal” and Sunny’s rejoinder is along the lines of, “Olaf’s machinations were perfectly legal so maybe we shouldn’t repose too much confidence in what is clearly a rotten edifice.” PREACH SUNNY. This is exactly how I headcanon Sunny would react to her siblings consummating their relationship tbh: eminently sensibly. Her #1 priority is not losing either one of them. Klaus/Violet being romantically involved would accomplish that objective admirably. Anyway Justice Strauss comes through with the paperwork and Klaus reads it three times to ensure it’s all right and tight, legally speaking, which it is. Man it’s nice to see an adult not let them down for once in their lives. Now they’re free to move to a new town where no one knows they’re related, where they can start over as a family. Their only regret (other than saying goodbye to their friends) is having to bury all their burning questions about their parents’ past:

Klaus wants so, so badly to uncover the secrets of the spyglass, of VFD and everything their parents never told them, but Violet looks at him with sad, sad eyes and says, “I don’t think this is going to go away”.

#violet x klaus #fic rec #Baudelairecest #tw: incest

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the-mjolnir-owner · 7 years ago

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Some thoughts about Infinity War

Now that I slept over it and had some garlic tea to help with my cold, I think it’s time to talk about it.

Long post ahead. Contains spoilers. Don’t read in case you didn’t watch the movie.

After almost 10 years of MCU, I was surprised they kept their death score so low. I was wrong. It was a risky decision to make things like that and they are brave, let's see how it rolls from now on.

I wasn't surprised about any of this, really, because I was sure all of them would die. The fact that some of them happened to survive was a plus. I wasn't surprised about all the asgardians + some of the sakaarians + Heimdall + Loki (+ probably Valkyrie) dying right in front of Thor right in the beginning. The whole shock value was necessary to make Thanos stand up like a big unforgiving villain and they made it, he killed an entire population of space refugees that consisted of children, elderly people and non combatant, unarmed men and women. You can feel the whole cinema feels as powerless and impotent as Thor, hands tied both literally and figuratively. Thumbs up for the Russos, thumbs up for emotional trauma and heartbreak and tense moments.

Cons

Loki

All along I thought he had a plan, maybe because that's what the fandom made me believe, less because of what we actually see on screen. Loki has always been a shitty planner and all his schemes blow up in his face. I believed he had a trick up his sleeve that Thor and the audience didn't know when he took the tesseract, which was a stupid ass decision. But he didn't, in the end there was nothing. I don't know, maybe he thought they'd have more time, but when Thanos asked him for the tesseract, and Thor told him they didn't have it, I could taste the regret that emanated out of Loki. He regrets it, he really does. And he died saving the most important person in his life, and I was angry and sad about how it all ended so soon.

They didn't give us what kind of deal Thanos had with Loki, how did they meet, how did it go, if Loki knew the Dark Order, nothing. It was bad writing, really, because Loki normally has double intentions. It was bad, predictable and it hurt to watch. I thought he was going to use the tesseract himself and manage to save the day but they all died anyway. I wanted Loki to help to kill Thanos, I thought he'd have a secret weapon in the end, or a secret way to destroy him that he learned from the time he spent with Thanos. Nada. I'm sad and disappointed, he didn't deserve it. He was doing everything right this time :(

Romance

I'm not very fond of romance in hero movies, except in rare occasions where it's well done (Wonder Woman yay) and there was a lot of heteronormativity romantic scenes. I wanted to skip forward all of Wanda/Vision interactions and Gamora/Peter was too clingy imo. We could have saved some time without them.

Thanos

Ok, I get it he's big and evil and purple. But he had a lot of time of just wondering and doing titan things. Wherever he showed up on screen I showed him the finger like the adult I am.

The Dark Order

I don't know their names, I don't know their ambitions, they are just random people following orders. They aren't strong or extraordinary and they were easily subdued by our heroes.

Bruce Banner/Hulk

He's still lost and confused, I get it, but he was exaggerated and borderline boring. Whenever he was on screen I'd roll my eyes. Where is the Hulk when we need him the most? Sounds to me he's only valiant against smaller thunder lords, uh.

Captain America

Too little screen time, I only remember like 3 things he said, but it was good to have him back and some people cheered in the cinema when he first appeared to save Vision. I wish we had seen more of him, especially more of his interactions with Thor.

Natasha

Same as Cap. Too little screen time. I love her I always like to see her.

Red Skull

?? ???? ??????? That's all I'm saying.

Thor's suicidal attempts

First when Loki died and Thor crawled to him to cradle him closer. I don't think Thor had the energy to leave and if he did, he wouldn't. This time he wasn't going to leave Loki behind and I think he decided the best thing to do was to die with his people and the last member of his family, all of them in a space coffin and none would know of what happened to the asgardians. Of course, he didn't die with the explosion like he intended and he had yet another chance when he tried to reignite the star. It was also sad to watch, how extreme he'd go and how little regard he has for himself and his well being. We have Thor telling Eitrit that he should have hope in a moment, the other moment he tries to get himself killed. Rocket and Eitrit were worried about it too and I don't think there's a solution to it. Thor will go is ready to kill or die or both and he won't stop.

Pros

Doctor Strange

He has his priorities sorted and he doesn't change them. He does what he must to save shit and I trust him because he knows what's up.

Guardians of the Galaxy

It's amazing how they all sound like a big family, I really like them and I loved how they interacted with Thor. I'd like to see a version where they managed to get in time and help the asgardians. Drax telling that Thor is what happens when an angel and a pirate have a baby had me in tears. Peter jealous of Gamora, priceless.

Thor

And here I go. It's no secret that Thor is my favorite. I always love Thor in every situation and in every movie he's in. In Infinity War he's hurt, he's broken, he's lost and hopeless but he still moves on and that's the kind of hope I need. All of his arc in Ragnarok was pointless. If Marvel was going to kill all the asgardians anyway, why make Thor save them?

Chris Hemsworth's acting is on point, he made the most of every scene as usual. All the emotion on his eyes when he saw Loki/Heimdall dying was enough to have me crying with him, like I was on his place. He has gone through so much and his suicidal attempts just prove that he finally had enough. Marvel finally gave him an opportunity to talk about his family and he talked with Rocket of all the people (creature). It was a gift to have Thor so wounded yet so woke. He knows what he has to do and how to do it and he'll do it even if it kills him because he has nothing left to lose. It hurts, but that's that kind of energy that have things going.

Thor takes the Guardian's supplies and he's ready to steal their ship and they decide to go along, because, come on, what else can they do? Call the police against the asgardian? But Thor knows how to use his words and he convinces them to go with him and help him. More than his good looks, it's good intentions and sincerity.

When he learned about Gamora's family he instantly regarded her as a friend, he knows she's not the one to blame about the mistakes of her Father, and he knows about it all too well.

Stormbreaker

Thor's whole self-discover journey in Ragnarok taught him that he didn't need a hammer to be powerful, the power was in him all along. Infinity War took it and threw it in the trash. The moment Thor thinks of a plan he thinks of forging a new weapon. Thor in Ragnarok knew he didn't need a weapon. Thor in Infinity War almost died to get a new shiny bigger hammer. I think the idea of it was to make an axe to fight the Gauntlet, and I will only accept it this way. And Thor looks good with an axe.

Gamora

OMG Why? I wasn't expecting for this at all, neither was she it seems. I didn't like it how they made it sound like that what Thanos felt for her was love, when I doubt that he can love anything. He tries to convince her to come along, he uses Nebula to convince her (and ouch, poor Nebula) but Gamora is strong in her views and beliefs. She's rather die than help him. Little did she know that her death would always help him, whether she liked it or not.

Wakanda

Poor wakandans didn't deserve any of this, to have this battle on their yard. When Thor did THAT, when he showed up with his new weapon to help them, lightening on his eyes and everything, people in cinema cheered. They cheered again when he wounded Thanos and I know he'll try again and again until he get it. Or die, more likely.

It was pretty obvious to the audience that Thor is by far the most powerful avenger, sided with Wanda, and he'll only grow stronger and more powerful out of spite and hate, those are great fuels. I still wanted Thor to greet T'Challa and to have them recognizing each other like the Kings they are.

Girl power

When Wanda was fighting Proxima and we all thought the was about to die, Natasha and Okoye came to the rescue and I was so proud and so happy to see them together, like sisters, helping Wanda who is a still so young but so powerful and so full of pain. It was also one of the best interactions.

After this long essay, I'll say the movie had it's good parts and it's bad parts, like everything in life. I didn't like the ending but I wasn't exactly shocked. I think there's still so much to happen, I think there are so many people to return and all we can do is wait and create new content to fix what we didn't like and improve what we liked. That's what I'll do. If I learned something with this movie, is that I should always be positive. Like Thor. The sun will shine upon us again.

#infinity war #infinity war spoiler #infinity war spoilers #iw spoilers #long post #ooc #//those are my opinions considering what I watched #feel free to disagree but please be polite

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sunnyuto · 7 years ago

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I have so many issues with the MAMAs.

First of all, the fact that it’s entirely based on fan votes is fucking ridiculous. It makes it so predictable and so unfair to smaller groups with better songs. EXO is winning all of the categories they were nominated for and the only reason they’re winning is because their fandom’s heads are shoved so far up their asses that they can’t hear how SHIT KoKo Bop and Power were. Power is a song that would m a y b e be passable as a rookie group song, but not a group with five years of experience following up songs like Monster. Meanwhile, you have songs like Beautiful by Monsta X and Don’t Wanna Cry by Seventeen and Shangri La by VIXX that are SO MUCH BETTER but have no chance of winning because their fandoms are smaller. Not to mention that so many people, ESPECIALLY exo-ls and army from what I’ve observed, will vote with as many IDs as they can while using a VPN, which screws up the vote even more.

Secondly, the website is one giant glitch. It took me two days just to log in to begin with, and then it blocked me from voting before I even got to vote and told me that my IP address had already reached the daily voting limit even though it glitched me out of the voting page when I tried the first time.

Third, groups like Wanna One and IOI shouldn’t be included, because they’re temporary from the moment they debut. They already have a set end date and their members are going back to other groups. Plus, their popularity is skewed because of the show they were on so they have an advantage over other groups. You can even see it in the way their members receive votes after they disband. The ONLY reason that Chungha’s song, which sounds literally like every other song from this summer, is winning in its category is BECAUSE she was in IOI. At least Pristin’s and Weki Meki’s songs are actually distinguishable from all the other music that came out this year. It literally takes me until the singing starts to identify Why Don’t You Know from Gashina from Island.

Fourth, there needs to be a time frame where songs/artists can be nominated. Taemin is literally winning his category by a landslide for a song that was released a week ago. MNET should set a time frame that starts from say September 1 of the previous and goes until August 31 of the current year, that way they can actually see how well a song does throughout its promotions and actually choose songs that aren’t just going to get them a lot of votes because of who sings it but because of the quality, then release the lists/open voting at the end of October so they have a month or so to actually see how all the songs from the year did.

For a show that markets itself as the Grammys of kpop, MAMA is really fucking corrupt and I’m sick of it. I wish I could go in and vote for MX and Pristin and Day6 and groups that actually deserve to win, but I know it’s no use and the website won’t let me anyway.

Fuck MAMA.

#mnet asian music awards #rant #come at me i don't fucking care #monsta x #exo #bts #pristin #weki meki #chungha #taemin #day6 #winner #sunmi #wanna one #ioi #seventeen #vixx #mama awards #mama 2017

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onceuponamirror · 7 years ago

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heart rise above

///// CHAPTER 13

summary: It wasn’t an experiment with freedom borne of some Americana fantasy; rather, a road trip of purely logistical intentions. The plan was simple. Drive from Boston to Chicago for his sister’s college graduation. That’s it.

Or, he drives a Ford Pickup Named Desire.

Mechanic!AU

fandom: riverdale ship: betty x jughead words: 75k chapters: 13/19

[read from the beginning] [read the latest]

You're walking meadows in my mind Making waves across my time

He realizes he has always been fascinated by bubbles.

He thinks most people probably went through a phase as kids where they liked them, enjoyed them, but for him, it was much heavier an interest—because the concept of a near-endless supply of anything was enough to appeal to the attention of the quiet little boy in threadbare sweaters.

In fact, one of his earliest memories is of just that thought. Sitting cross-legged in the itchy grass of the Andrews’ backyard, it was Archie’s birthday party, and even then, Jughead felt like an outsider and wondered why he’d been invited. Everyone else was playing on the Slip ‘N Slide and he’s always been afraid of water, so he’d sat off to the side in his oversized t-shirt, next to the babysitter on whom he’d later have his first crush.

She’d nudged him in the side and procured a bottle of bubble soap. Dipping a pink bubble wand inside, she’d pulled it up to her lips, and then her mouth formed a perfect o shape. He had inhaled, blinked, and then dozens of little circles of air and soap were blowing into the sun.

His mouth had too made an o shape, but accompanied by the softest o sound he’s probably ever made. He’d leaned back on his palms to tip his chin up to the sky and watch them float away in swaths. Running away was a notion he’d already become familiar with, but that’s not the feeling he got from watching the bubbles drift away, even as they left him there in the grass, growing smaller and smaller in their line of sight.

He knew, even then, that they were just something borrowed and being returned. Later, he would learn the color in a bubble was simple light refraction, but right then and there, it quick wink of time and magic, as he saw himself rainbowed in their reflection and felt briefly beyond.

One floated his way, and he broke it.

As he got older, and his habits got older too, he and Archie would test the limits of bubbles. He remembers getting stoned in the Andrews’ garage in a way they’d thought was the peak of stealth, passing a joint to Archie in one hand and the makeshift, tinfoil bubble wand in the other.

Jughead would try to smother his giggles while Archie took a healthy puff of the joint, suck it in for a moment, and then blow the smoke into the wand. A bubble would appear at the other end, filled with a tiny gray storm cloud. It’d hover above them, and with an itch he could never quite scratch, Jughead would always reach forward and pop it with his finger, littering them in soap and weed vapor.

“Jug,” Archie would groan, “why do you keep doing that? I wanna see how long it’ll last!”

He never did figure out why he couldn’t resist that urge to pop the bubbles. Perhaps it was just a preview of the personality trait labeled morbid curiosity that would come to define him. Or maybe it was the only slice of destruction he was allowed; the spoilsport in him, or the desire to end something before it ended by itself.

(By then, he’d already seen his share of ends, and this was the only lesson he’d learned.)

Later, older still, he’d learn a lot more about bubbles. About the science, the physics. It’d be a glow on his computer screen at three in the morning, hours deep into a black hole of Wikipedia articles, as he’d read about torpedoes and something called the violent collapse of bubbles that propelled them into devastation.

It’d been a strange moment, to realize something as innocent and as ethereal as the little bubbles blown into a backyard at a child’s birthday party could be darkened, turned inward, and used as weapons.

He’d write about them as literary devices too, in the last college class he’d ever take. He’d watch the words housing bubble fly across the eight o’clock news in his junior year of high school and wait for his father to find something new to blame.

And he thinks about them now, watching Betty Cooper helping her niece and nephew perfect their cartwheels in a backyard not at all unlike the place where his first memories live.

Because he’s written about them, romanticized them, intellectualized them, but he’s never actually felt like he’s lived inside a bubble before. Even in retrospect, having a full family unit until age fourteen didn’t feel like one because it was far too destructive to ever be lost in.

This is different. It feels almost too simple to describe what he’s feeling as happiness, but that’s what it is: a bubble of happy. He’s traced the dictionary up and down for something more profound than such a commodified word, but every time he comes up short.

It’s just happiness.

The way he feels like he can reach forward and tuck Betty up into his side without questioning it, or the way she’s already snuck him no less than three kisses this afternoon and the little smile on her face when she’d quietly thanked him for socializing with her family.

The way they haven’t talked about a damn thing regarding what’s between them, almost blindly, and clearly on purpose when he overhears her sister trying to bring it up. That’s the real mark of this kind of bubble, he supposes; the plausible deniability. But he’d laid her bare and she’d held him right back, and twice already, and he can barely stop thinking about when they’ll get to do it next.

Or, perhaps most of all, it’s the way when her nephew finds something in the back of the grass and he shows it to Betty, she leans down and whispers something in his ear while pointing at Jughead. And soon the little redheaded boy is scampering over to him, thrusting a tiny dandelion in his face and proudly exclaiming that he gets to make a wish.

He feels Betty’s eyes on him, and tries to remember how to talk to children. It’s been so long since his sister was this young, but she always is in his mind and it’s just like a bike. Jughead folds his arms playfully and tells him that he’d better think about it real hard first, better make sure he’s really visualizing what it is that he wants.

Arthur scrunches up his face until he says he’s thought his hardest, and then blows on the dandelion until almost all the seeds are picked up in the wind.

Jughead makes a wish too.

It’s a bubble, and he knows—he just knows—he’s going to pop it.

After second helpings (and thirds, for himself) and the kids start showing the telltale signs of exhaustion, everyone starts packing things up. Even the penny dreadful stock character named Cheryl helps out, clearing paper plates and deigning him with an actual smile when he takes them from her to throw away.

“What the hell did you say to her, you witch?” He mutters to Betty after it happens. They’re standing in the kitchen while the rest of her family is tidying up the backyard and he’s just grateful Cheryl’s gone, even if she was being nice to him, because it means he’s finally alone with Betty. “Pretty sure that’s a totally different person.”

She smirks and helps him scrape off food into the compost bin. “That’s between girls,” she says, clearly deliberately being vague.

“Again, otherwise known as witchcraft,” he murmurs against her ear, coming up behind her. There’s a terrible joke on the tip of his tongue about the spell she’s cast on him, but that’s a little too on the nose, even for him. Instead, he wraps his arms around her waist, because he’s going to take the first inch he can get, even if it’s in front of a garbage can.

She puts down the paper plate and twists in his arms. Her hands come around his neck, and he feels it again. Happy.

“You want to stay, after everyone leaves?” She asks, and god, every time she says that little word—stay—he swears it adds a year on his life.

“Yes,” he tells her, his fingers scattering where they’re strewn across her hip. “I need to go back to the motel and get a change of clothes and probably shower, but I’ll come right back.”

“I have a shower here,” she says softly, and with that same kind of teasing innocence she’d used on her sister, winking through the veil of the Virgin Mary.

He groans. “I see what you’re doing, for the record, and it’s practically Draconian. But I want to try to work a little tonight, and I need my laptop for that. So let me go peacefully into the sweet night, and I’ll be back before you know it. Plus,” he adds, his voice dropping, “I only grabbed a few things when I left.”

She seems to catch his meaning and that’s the trick, because she unravels herself from his grasp and returns to her cleanup duties. And then she looks up at him, with that now familiar and thrillingly pleased, secretive smile. “Juggie?”

“Yeah?”

“Just bring the box.”

They of course don’t go through a whole box of condoms, because neither of them is inhuman.

But—in their defense—they do make a decent stab at it.

That first night, he throws his things so rapidly into a bag that he barely registers what he’s bringing. It’s not until he gets back to Betty’s that he realizes he only brought the accidental System of A Down shirt that he solely still owns for the spare day he exercises.

He gripes when he pulls it out of his bag, but Betty promises them he won’t need clothes anyway, and, well, she ends up being right.

She rises annoyingly early for work on Monday morning, tells him to sleep and stay as long as he wants, and yes, she’s sure, her mother definitely won’t be home for days. Then asks if he’ll stay over again tonight, and tells him where they hide the spare key when he assures her that he absolutely wants to, and kisses him goodbye.

(They keep a key under the little concrete fairy a few feet away from the front door. It’s completely conspicuous, but he supposes an All-American town like Riverdale has never heard of a burglar.)

He rises a few hours later, still smelling her on his pillow, and takes his time wandering around the Cooper house to catalogue Betty’s childhood. He wouldn’t call it snooping, per se, but he might closely examine the books on her shelf—perhaps taking notes about what to recommend based on what she hasn’t got—or maybe admire her framed diploma from Columbia in the study, or he especially might possibly linger in front of her family photos and wonder what it would’ve been like to grow up with her.

Eventually, he decides to head back to his motel and grab an actually decent change of clothes, if nothing but to get some fresh air and hopefully some fresh perspective. However, if he thought leaving the first location of Norman Rockwell’s Home Improvement Show was going to help shake him from his euphoria of sex and post-sex, he was sorely mistaken.

Rather than stay in his motel and write while we waits for her to finish up work and summon him back, he decides to try something. It feels fluttering, even as an idea, but it’s something he’s always desperately wanted to experience, and he might not ever get the same chance again.

So he heads back to the Cooper house, retrieves the key from the little fairy, and lets himself back in. And then he sets up his computer on the dinner table, and works on his novel until he hears the lock turning.

He feels it then too, as she walks through the room, looking somehow more beautiful than when she left, and sees him sitting there; the little bubble of happiness expanding out of his chest and all across the kind of big house he’d never thought he’d sleep in.

“Honey, I’m home,” she says in a singsong voice as she drops her things onto the kitchen counter.

“Hello dear,” he plays back, “how was your day?”

It’s a game and they’re being wry and teasing, but it’s just what he was hoping for. It was why he came back when he did; he’s always wondered what it would feel like to be working from home and one day have a partner walk through the door and be happy to see him. He thinks it should be sad, that once again his greatest fantasy is nothing more than the simplest domesticity, but he’s so glad to see her that he doesn’t dwell on it.

“My day was good,” she says, in almost off-hand voice as she slides into his lap, one arm hooking around his shoulders and the other closing his laptop. And then she’s kissing him, and as is becoming habit with them, quickly grows to something more.

They have sex on the low kitchen counter that night, him standing between her legs and she’s her loudest yet, and he’s never once thought himself as insatiable in any way but regarding to food until now. After, having moved upstairs, he makes her come with his mouth and she returns the favor.

It’s almost too much to think about, how little they can keep their hands off one another. He’s fairly sure they’re both lost to the looming deadline and trying to get the most out of each other while they can through the guise of lust.

He’s becoming increasingly aware that he is not ready to leave her.

He wants to tell her he’s not sure he can go back to life before her, thinks he has to tell her, but that would break the bubble and he desperately doesn’t want to. He decides he’ll do it, but not until he has to go.

Instead, they make quesadillas at midnight in nothing but their underwear while the radio plays a tribute to The Best of the Seventies.

“Wow. Someone’s a major dork,” he tells her, grinning, watching her hips sway to along to some vague boogie-oogie, the spatula held up to her mouth as if it were a microphone.

Truthfully, this is a side of her he very much likes. He suspects she was a Taylor-Swift-Blasting-From-My-Bedroom type of teenage girl, and oddly enough, it’s not a turn-off for the person who stalked around high school with a pair of headphones and a Bright Eyes album.

“Shut up,” she laughs, flipping a quesadilla, “or you won’t get any!”

“So I was looking through a drawer for a napkin, saw the aprons, didn’t see any that said Kiss the Chef. What have you got to say for yourself, Cooper?” he asks, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her stomach.

She giggles, and he’s half-sure he’s hallucinating it all but he’s not willing to blink.

Tuesday follows a familiar pattern; he goes for a long, solitary walk through town and then later makes sure to position himself as working away for when she comes home. The thrill he gets when they greet each other and talk about their days continues not to disappoint.

That night, however, they actually decide to have dinner at a normal hour, rather than immediately jumping one another, and eat while they debate whether the concept of the Great-American-Novel has to be inherently metafiction in order to be successful. The conversation actually turns him on a bit.

Afterwards, they cuddle up for a movie wherein more time is spent bantering through it than actually watching. She throws popcorn at his face and he kisses her when the music swells.

The eye of the bubble grows bigger in his chest.

On Wednesday, she originally wakes at 5:30, which by now he knows is her usual alarm to get to the garage by 7, but he still growls when he hears the humming little harpsichord ring tone she uses. “No,” he murmurs into her neck, once she shuts it off and tries to get out of bed. “Sleep.”

“Juggie,” she whispers, half-warningly. “The garage.”

“Open late,” he grunts, eyes still closed. He pulls her closer against him, and thinks perhaps once describing this moment as reverence for the peach of her skin wasn’t far off. “C’mon, girl boss. Sleep in for once.”

She sighs, like maybe she’s thinking about it. He opens one bleary eye to find her looking at him with exasperation, or maybe affection. But there’s something else there too, like a nervous, flittering thought. “You’re a bad influence,” she tells him, even as she settles back in against him, her forehead pressed into his chest, and exhaling gently. “Just one hour. That’s it.”

He drops a kiss at the top of her hair. “Yep, one hour.”

She doesn’t set another alarm.

Instead, they wake a couple hours later (a reasonable time for anyone to still consider morning, he thinks) because his phone has erupted in an uncharacteristic amount of text notifications. He makes a muffled sound, reaching over Betty to scrape around for his phone. And then he realizes that it’s not just his phone buzzing away, but hers as well. She seems to realize that at the same time and sits up, and together they check their messages.

“Veronica,” she sighs, at the same moment that he sees the litany of texts from an unknown number. Still, an invitation that feels more like a demand couldn’t have come from many people, and he probably would’ve guessed it was from Veronica anyway. He recognizes Archie’s number up at the top too and assumes that’s where the raven-haired princess got his contact information.

“Oh god, is it already after nine?” She mutters, looking at the clock on her phone. “I better text Joaquin and ask if he can work a few hours today. He’s usually got mornings free.”

While she does that, Jughead scrolls through the new messages, frowning. “She wants to throw a party tonight? It’s a Wednesday.”

Betty chuckles, clicking her phone off and rolling up against him. “You clearly don’t know Veronica very well yet,” she says lightly, smiling up at him. And then realizes that he’s still frowning. “What?”

“I probably won’t go,” he sighs, hating the way her face falls at this information.

“Oh,” she says softly, her eyebrows furrowing. “Is…is it because of your dad? You don’t want to be around alcohol?”

That would actually be a decent reason in comparison to the one he actually has, but it would also be a lie. He flops onto his back, pushing his hair back from his face. “No, no. I mean, being around drunken people isn’t my favorite activity in the book, but it doesn’t really bother me in a ‘Nam-flashback kind of way.”

She shifts a little closer. “Then what’s wrong, Juggie?”

“There’s just a lot of people in this group text,” he says carefully, not wanting to outright admit that he’s got the social anxiety of a jackrabbit, especially not to the woman he’s still expecting to come to her senses at any moment.

“Not that many,” she replies, grinning a little now. “You should’ve seen the invite list from her last party.”

“I know I’m a writer, but I can still count, Betts, and there a lot of numbers here,” he sighs. He scratches behind his ear, thinking about the lonely spot by the bonfire at Reggie’s party. “I’m not…great at parties, and especially not at ones where I only know three people. I don’t do well with small talk.”

“You know Kevin too,” she says, one of her hands rubbing distractedly at his stomach. She seems to have something of a preoccupation with that part of his body. “And Joaquin.”

He lets out another breath. “What about my favorite person, Persephone, queen of the underworld?”

“Cheryl?” Betty gives a half-hearted roll of the eyes. “She’s not in the text thread. And they’re definitely not there yet. So she won’t be lurking any more dark corners, waiting to bribe you for information.”

“She should’ve tried a bribe last time, she might’ve gotten a little more out of me that way,” Jughead says, which makes Betty smile.

“Oh. You’d say you’re open to bribes, then?” She asks, her hand on his stomach wandering a bit lower.

He pretends to look offended, but makes no effort to readjust her hand. “My stars, Betty Cooper,” he tuts, putting on an attempt at a terrible Southern accent.

“I’m just wondering what I can do to make you want to come,” she says brightly. “To the party,” she adds after a moment, because now he’s grinning. She whacks him in the shoulder. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“You go,” he tells her, shifting so that he’s leaning over her. He drops a kiss onto her jaw. “And you can come here after.”

She actually blushes, but curves her arms around his neck and meets his eyes. “Please, Juggie?” She asks, and he knows that’s it. “I promise I’ll protect you from small talk. And Ronnie said she wants to celebrate you two coming into town; it’s practically in your honor.”

What she doesn’t say is, it’s because you’re leaving this week, but they both hear it anyway.

“It is not,” he snorts. “It’s clearly in Archie’s honor, if anything. But…”

“But?” She repeats hopefully.

“Yeah, I’ll go,” he says, sighing heavily and smiling despite himself.

“Yay!” She squeals, pulling him closer so that she can kiss him fully and he thinks, distinctly not for the first time: worth it.

They have a round of late morning sex—his favorite kind, he realizes, because he gets to see her fully in the rising light—and when she comes, it’s through a string of curses, which is new for her. He likes it.

Afterwards, she announces she has to get to the garage, even though she sounds begrudging and lingers the whole way through dressing. He considers asking her what’s bothering her, but he has an inkling.

The truck is supposed to be done this week.

So he can’t ask, because that definitely would pop the bubble, and watches her go. He dawdles in bed for a little while before showering and heads into the backyard to do some writing outside. The weather has turned humid again, and will be unendurable in the coming afternoon, so he wants to enjoy what he can.

Betty comes home earlier than usual, tenser and less willing to play the mid-century-couple game, and immediately trots upstairs for a long shower. Once she emerges, looking clean and refreshed and willfully cheerful, she parades outfits in front of him for tonight’s party. He’s apparently very unhelpful, because he thinks she looks beautiful in every one of them, but with some heavy prompting, he admits he likes her best in blue.

She pulls on a baby blue top and a short white jean skirt, while he dresses in the same outfit he’d worn for their date. It’d gone over well then, and his options are limited. Betty pulls her hair into her usual ponytail, but this time leaves several locks of blonde laying against her forehead, and they walk to Pop’s for dinner.

They sit on the same side of the booth and do their best to talk about nothing; she’s still got that fidgeting look in her eye, and he’s still not brave enough to ask if it’s what he thinks it is. After a while, Betty glances at her phone, sees a flurry of texts, and exclaims that they’re already late, so they pay and rush to Veronica’s apartment.

“Lonely Boy!” Veronica greets as she throws open the door, beaming at him. She’s wearing something he thinks might be a typical ensemble of a cropped black shirt with an equally dark skirt. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. Archie said it was a fifty-fifty shot.”

Betty grins up at him as Jughead shrugs and says, “Hope he bet against me, then.”

“Noted, for next time,” Veronica smirks, and then moves aside to beckon them into the apartment. “I’ve got IPA and lagers in the kitchen, and Betty—pour toi, a bottle of your favorite rosé is on the counter.”

Raising a cautious eyebrow, Betty laughs. “I thought you said rosé was only suitable as a brunch wine, unless, and I quote, ‘one was at the Riviera.’”

Veronica waves a hand and makes a dismissive sound. It’s just exaggerated enough for Jughead to realize she might be quite tipsy. “Yes, and that’s still all true, but I know you love it. And I already bought it, so! It obviously must be drunk!”

“You’re in a good mood tonight,” Betty observes as they follow her into the kitchen, and Jughead realizes this is true. Granted, he doesn’t have much of a barometer for Veronica at this stage, but the only emotions of hers he’s been exposed to are coquettish, coy, surveying, wary, and coy again.

“I am,” Veronica sighs happily. “I am.”

When she doesn’t say anything else, Betty snorts. “Are you going to tell me why? You quit your job, or something?”

Dropping a none-too-subtle look over at Jughead, Veronica just says, “I wish. No, no, I’ll tell you later, B,” and then flounces out of her kitchen with an announcement that she’s off to be a perfect hostess and that she expects to see them mingling soon. Betty rolls her eyes after her, but fondly all the same, as she digs around in a drawer for a corkscrew.

She pauses just as she’s uncorked the bottle in the same way Archie hesitates before grabbing a beer in front of him. “It’s okay,” he tells her, passing her the large wine glass Veronica had also left out for her and then cracking open a lager for himself. “Really. I promise, the trauma is a lot less obvious than that.”

“But you’ll tell me if anything makes you uncomfortable, right?” She asks softly, clearly dodging his attempt at a joke, her hand on its increasingly most common spot along his jaw. He nods, the bubble moving all the way up to his throat.

She fills her glass with the pink wine and then hooks her arm through his to lead him out of the kitchen. There’s a brief moment where he thinks she might’ve been about to hold his hand, but he’s not sure.

Veronica’s apartment is spacious, but he’s starting to wonder if most of Riverdale is this way. It has an open floor plan, with a relatively small but gleaming kitchen tucked away in the corner, and a couple of doors that must lead to bathrooms, closets, portals to the dimensional reality where he usually lives, and bedrooms, in some order or another.

Whereas Betty’s room had spoken volumes about the push and pull between the person put on display versus the person she truly was, Veronica’s sense of décor fully fits her personality: purple orchids, white vases, but just enough indoor palms and plush dark velvet to evoke a kind of smoky art deco lounge filled with literati and their muses of the century.

Faint music drifts absently through the apartment, and there are probably about twenty some-odd people in milling about across the furniture or leaning up against walls, including Joaquin and Kevin, the latter of whom immediately fixes a wide but rapidly narrowing eye on them. “Hey Kev, hey Joaquin,” Betty says, fidgeting slightly as a furtive smile digs at Kevin’s lips.

His eyes flick over to Jughead, down to the place where Betty’s arm is tucked through his, and back to her. “Hey,” Kevin replies, somehow managing to say quite a lot with that one word. No one says anything else.

“Okay guys, good talk,” Jughead drawls, if only to cut the tension. Joaquin snorts, and it seems to break the silent conversation-slash-staring contest between Kevin and Betty.

She turns to Joaquin. “Thanks again for covering me this morning, by the way.”

He shrugs as if to say no big deal, but Kevin’s head swivels towards him. “You worked in the garage this morning?”

“I overslept,” Betty explains, sighing when Kevin immediately appears to read between the lines.

“Hm, betcha did,” Kevin demurs, taking a long sip from his beer. Betty flushes—it’s true that technically she overslept, but Kevin’s meaning isn’t lost on either of them and to deny that they didn’t afterwards have sex would be a lie.

“We’re going now,” Betty says, falsely bright as her fingers curl around Jughead’s arm. She introduces him to people around the room as they pass through it; most of the people here are friends from work or people from high school, and she says she only really knows a few of them. She doesn’t like Veronica’s coworkers very much and cleanly avoids them, but they have a decent chat with a guy named Dilton who happens to be in town visiting his parents and apparently recently sold his first tech company for a sum he seems itching to announce.

As promised, Betty protects him from small talk. She’s a completely natural charmer, skilled in a way that he could spend decades honing but still never match. She deflects and switches gears like the driver of a car she herself built. Once again, he’s in total awe of her.

Eventually, they find themselves with Archie and Veronica again, and he feels like he can breathe a little easier. Soon after, Veronica and Betty disappear to refill their wine glasses, leaving him with just Archie—which would be fine, except Archie is being evasive and seems uncharacteristically nervous about something.

Jughead opens his mouth to ask him what’s crawled up his ass, but Archie has other ideas. “Dude, wait, you know what I got?” Archie scampers off to a set of hooks and digs around in his coat pocket, one of those bombers that is made to resemble a letterman’s jacket. He retrieves a little Ziploc bag and dangling it in Jughead’s face. “Look what I snagged from Reggie before we left.”

“You stole his weed?” Jughead laughs. “Do you have a death wish?”

Archie scoffs. “Whatever. He’ll never notice, he has so much of it. So, wanna smoke?”

Given that he’s almost done with his allotted beer, he might as well. “Yeah, gimme. I’ll roll it.” He sinks onto a couch and clears a space while Archie disappears back to his jacket and quickly returns with a grinder, some rolling papers, a lighter and leaves him to it, saying he’ll be back in a few. It feels almost like high school again—left to roll a joint in the back of a foggy party he’s never quite sure he agreed to attend. Only this time, he definitely knows why he’s here.

As if hearing her name in his thoughts, Betty plops down beside him, placing her wine on the table as her chin nestles into his shoulder. “Jughead Jones,” she says slowly, and slightly impishly. “You getting high?”

He finishes grinding up the weed and turns to look at her. “Please tell me you were a D.A.R.E. pledge,” he says, which earns him a whack on the arm and a smirk. Depositing the bits of pot into the valley of the paper, he runs his tongue along the edge to seal the joint and then pauses, realizes Betty is staring at it, her pupils blackened.

Jughead finishes his work and tucks it behind his ear as she watches him, biting down hard on her lip. His hand trails up her knee and onto her thigh in order to shift closer. “Got something to share with the class, Officer Cooper?”

She’s looking at him in the way that usually precursors the moment that she pounces on him, but instead she seems to straighten her shoulders with resolve to do the opposite. Disappointment surges through him, but he understands why she might not want to start something she can’t finish in a room full of people.

Betty reaches forward, plucks the joint from behind his ear, and nestles it between her lips. “Got a lighter?”

He quickly grabs it from the table and holds it up for her, flicking on the flame. She drapes herself into the pillows of the couch and takes a puff. He likes this look for her—not necessarily just the joint between her teeth, but the relaxed lean in her posture, the half-lidded and comfortable glow in her eyes as she blows a bit of smoke out of the corner of her mouth.

He has already learned she’s not a person easily unwound, so to see her draped into a couch and smiling lazily at him is enough to fill him with warmth.

She passes him the joint, and he falls back into the couch alongside her as he takes a light hit. “Hi,” he murmurs.

“Hi,” she hums back. The once-familiar hazy din of the pot is already settling above his thoughts and he wants to kiss her so badly, but he’s not sure what she’s comfortable with in front of her friends. He gets his answer quickly though, because she soon closes the space between them. It’s a short kiss; something sweet, and more like a promise, but there all the same.

Hand-in-hand, Archie and Veronica arrive back at the couch just as they’re pulling apart and he tries his best to ignore the smug, satisfied look on Veronica’s face. “Yo, pass that,” Archie says, and Jughead complies. He takes too big a hit and coughs as he releases his smoke, trying to pass it on to Veronica, who declines.

“Not my thing,” she says, one hand held up and the other grasping a nearly empty wine glass. She seems a bit surprised when the joint is then offered to Betty, but more surprised still when she actually takes it. “Uh oh,” she says, amused. “You’re going to regret that.”

“No I won’t,” Betty insists, her eye rolls already becoming more exaggerated.

“I wasn’t talking to you, sweetie,” Veronica replies, glancing at Jughead. “Fair warning, Stoned Betty is a very Emotional Betty.”

“Okay, I don’t get emotional,” Betty scoffs, but it definitely sounds defensive.

Still addressing Jughead, Veronica says, “Last time she smoked pot, she lied on my floor, made me put on Fleetwood Mac while she silently stared at literally nothing, and then immediately spent half an hour crying at the memory of the time she accidentally stepped on a snail, or something.”

“You’re exaggerating.” She pauses. “It wasn’t a snail,” she tells her friend, but drops her head closer to Jughead, her eyes slightly glazed over. “But, I mean, thunder only happens when it’s raining! Isn’t that so beautiful, Juggie?”

She is absolutely already stoned, and he tells her as much, raising his eyebrows. She shushes him and shuffles closer so that she’s fully curled up besides him on the couch. He smirks, draping an arm around her shoulders while he takes another hit of the joint.

One of the things he’s always liked about weed is the body high; the tingling awareness of every inch of skin and the blood moving beneath it; the organs in his chest inhaling and exhaling to the beat of his nerves. With Betty next to him, it’s like that feeling magnified ten fold.

He can feel his heart plucking louder than ever, but the album has flipped. It’s a song he’s never heard.

After they’ve passed the joint around to its last nib, Veronica says they have to get off the couch before they’re all forever fused to it, and insists they dance. Jughead laughs and says no way, but Betty is tugging on his arm and pulling him from the couch, all the while he tells her it’s not going to happen several times. Veronica twirls by her lonesome at what is clearly her favorite spot at the center of the room, and Jughead notes that she’s well past tipsy at this point.

“Oh, shit—hold on, I know what I’m going to play,” Archie says, and then scampers off. The music cuts for the briefest moment before being replaced by the one song Archie must know is sure to annoy him the most. The opening chords to Don’t Stop Believin’ filter through the room, and he groans loudly as Archie approaches them, his head bobbing.

“Boo,” Jughead drawls over the guitar intros, making Betty laugh. “How many bad pubs in Southie do you have to hear this song in before you’ll get sick of it?”

But Archie’s barely listening through his set of air drums. “You can take the boy out of Boston, but you can’t take the pub out of me!” And Jughead doesn’t have a moment to call out how little sense that makes before Archie breaks out into the first lines along with the song, “Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world!”

“Please, I will pay you to stop,” Jughead moans, but Archie is drunk, stoned, and deliberately lost in the song and just waves his pointer fingers in Jughead’s face as he sings, “She took the midnight train, going an-y-whe-e-ere!”

Suddenly, Veronica has thrown her arms around Archie and has joined him in belting out, “Just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit! He took the midnight train going any-whe-e-e-re!”

“You two are a match made in hell,” he mutters, as Veronica drunkenly announces that she just loves to sing. A few people have moved into the circle, joining along with the lyrics, and he spots more getting up, even Dilton.

That’s the problem with this song, and really, why he hates it—other than the fact that Archie always puts it on whenever they’re near a jukebox—it’s the hypnotic spell it casts on every person in the vicinity wherein they’re physically incapable of not singing along like complete idiots.

While the first guitar solo takes over, he glances over at Betty by his side, biting her lip through a mischievous grin, and he realizes what’s coming next. “Not you too,” he sighs, but she’s already joined the crowd in their rendition of, “A singer in a smoky room, the smell of wine and cheap perfume!”

As the lyrics announce that for a smile they can share the night, Kevin appears out of nowhere and grabs Betty by the waist, dancing her out of Jughead’s grasp, while the beats of the instruments rise and Veronica and Archie start bouncing and singing the first chorus up at the ceiling. “Strangers! Waiting! Up and down the boule-e-e-vard!”

Figures move between them like shadows on the wall, and as if in slow motion, the haze of pot and the faint buzz of beer in his eyes, he watches Betty throw her head back in laughter as Kevin dips her. He whispers something in her ear and she giggles even harder. The guitar swells and she looks so beautiful under the dim yellow light.

He has a thought that he cannot admit.

“Fuck it,” he mutters, striding through the swaying crowd to reach her just as the song buoyantly declares that they’re living just to find emotion and hiding somewhere in the night.

Kevin releases Betty in order to drag his boyfriend into the throng, and Jughead happily takes his place, one hand at her waist, the other grasping her hand. It’s possibly the magnetic build of the music, or maybe it’s just the room full of people spinning in circles and releasing the words into the air as their beers slosh around madly, or maybe it’s the pot, or the delight in Betty’s eyes when he touches her, but he finds himself joining in.

“Working hard to get my fill, everybody wants a thrill!”

Archie whoops and hollers in loud approval when he hears Jughead’s voice in the fray and Veronica’s arms are waving in the air above her, and Betty is dancing with him, their fingers laced, and he loses his voice to the song. “You know the words, after all!” Betty laughs, as he rolls his eyes.

“Every single person in the country knows the words to this song, Betts,” he says, trying to sigh and appear appropriately brooding, but then the lyrics surge again and the attempt is lost.

“Some will win, some will lose! Some were born to sing the blues!” They all collectively belt it out at the top of their lungs, practically screaming this goofy, cheesy, terrible, bonding-with-strangers type of music that he definitely hates, except as he twirls Betty in his arms, he thinks he understands the appeal a bit more.

Another guitar solo runs through them and the room is alive with energy. He feels at once so one with the crowd—an unfamiliar feeling, to say the least—and equally alone with just Betty as she moves against him in an entirely new way; with utter, bubbling joy, her ponytail bouncing with her. The song urges everyone to don’t stop believing and to hold onto that feeling and that the movie never ends because it goes on and on, and on, and on—

And he agrees, especially as the moment pulls back and becomes fisheyed, just like the reflection in a bubble twenty years ago.

He spins her again, and the moment goes on and on, and on, and on.

The playlist is clearly Archie’s, because the music that follows next is a procession of the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, and otherwise vague, crowd-pleasing bar music—including one that leads to a terrible rendition of the song Come On Eileen. And despite having exercised his limit of what might be considered dancing, he has to admit he’s having a good time, even as the pot wears off.

Eventually, and with considerable effort on her behalf given her height, Veronica slings her arms over both Archie and Jughead’s shoulders and informs them that they’re low on beer and would they please go get more and that there’s a liquor store just around the corner and please again.

Betty throws him a worried look, clearly not sure what his limits are, but he just kisses her on the cheek and assures her it’s really fine, following Archie out the door.

“Sorry I’ve been self-imposed as persona non grata lately,” Jughead says, as they meet the late spring night air. “I’ve just been…busy. Writing.”

“Uh huh,” Archie muses. “Is that what you’re gonna call it?”

“Shut up,” he says, shoving Archie in the shoulder just hard enough that he stumbles a bit. “I mean, yeah though. I’ve been with Betty.”

Archie waggles his eyebrows. “So I heard from Veronica, who heard from Betty. Sounds like it’s going well, dude.”

It is, he thinks. He looks up at the dark sky and nearly imagines something translucent wiggling overhead, a bubble blown too big. They reach the liquor store, and he is almost thankful for the harsh white light of the fluorescent bulbs, because it feels like a dousing relief from the fog and warmth leftover from the party. He hangs back while Archie selects a few six packs and pays and then they’re on their way back to the apartment.

“Anyway, it’s not like I haven’t been hanging out with Veronica a lot too,” Archie says, grunting as he redistributes the weight of the beers in his arms. Jughead offers to take some, but Archie says he hasn’t been working out lately and that it’ll be good for him. “So it’s okay, dude.”

“Yeah, I just figure we get to see each other all the time, so I didn’t think it was really a big deal,” Jughead sighs. “And we’ll have the drive to Chicago, and back in Boston, and so on.”

Archie doesn’t say anything, and at first Jughead thinks it’s because he’s still trying to figure out the best way to carry all the beers. But then he realizes that Archie has put them down entirely, even though they’re still a block away from Veronica’s.

“Uh, about that,” he says slowly, scratching at his temple. “I have something I gotta tell you.”

“Gee, that’s not ominous at all,” Jughead tries to chuckle, but Archie’s face is rarely serious and it makes him hesitate.

“It’s good news,” Archie says quickly. “It’s… Okay, so I think I’m not going to go to Chicago. I can see my mom another time, and I wanna spend a bit more time with Ronnie here.”

Jughead sighs, because honestly he’s been expecting something like this for a while. Archie is already self-described as head over heels for Veronica and it’s definitely not unlike his best friend to throw away time with him in favor of a girl. And besides, he’d probably be extending his own trip if there weren’t such a specific reason for why he himself has to leave, so he can’t judge. Not really sure why he’d label that good news, but it is Archie, after all.

“Alright,” he says. “We wouldn’t really have had much time to do anything except drive, since we’ve been here so long. I get it. It’s cool.”

He turns to go, thinking that’s the end of it, but Archie is still rooted to the spot. “There’s something else too,” he says tentatively. “So…uh, I’m gonna move to LA.”

Jughead blinks, sure he’s heard him wrong. “You’re—you’re going to what?”

“I’m going to move to LA,” Archie repeats, much firmer now.

He stares at him, and then starts to laugh, even as his stomach sinks low. “What the fuck, Arch, no you’re not.”

“Yes, I am,” he insists, his voice growing stronger. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and…it just finally seems like the right moment.”

“You’ve been thinking about it for a while?” Jughead repeats, scoffing derisively. “Yeah, okay, sure. Then why haven’t I ever heard you mention it before?”

“Because—” Archie hesitates, but seems emboldened by the mocking scowl on Jughead’s face. “Because I know I’m, like, your only friend, and I didn’t know how you’d take it.”

“You’re not my only friend,” Jughead spits, even though it’s probably true. Really though, who else does he ever hang out with? He ended things with Ethel amicably enough, and he sees her sometimes, but probably not enough to consider her a friend. Does he even count Reggie, especially if their friendship requires Archie’s presence to bring them together?

“Look, I’ve been telling you for a while that I’m, like, at a wall with work. I can’t keep doing these stupid local commercials forever, it’s really bumming me out. My industry is mostly in LA, and if I’m there, I can try to do songs for TV or movies, or something,” he says in a placating voice, and Jughead hates that Archie actually has a valid point. But then he adds, “And…you know, with Veronica moving there, it just seems like the right time.”

Jughead releases a choked laugh and throws a hand into the air. “There we go. You know, you almost had me there, trying to justify this as a career move. Jesus, this is ridiculous, even for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Archie says, his voice rising.

“I’ve been watching you pull shit like this my whole life, Arch. ‘Sorry Jughead, I can’t go to the Yankees game your dad saved up for because Pepper just really needs to see me,’ or, ‘Actually, Jug, I think I’m going to apply to Berklee School of Music because Valerie said she was.’ Take your fucking pick. You make these impulsive life decisions because of some girl you barely know, and then you’re completely confused at what went wrong when it blows up in your face!”

“I—okay, I applied to Berklee because of Val, but I went there because I love music, okay?” Archie is yelling now. “And fuck off, because none of that’s the same, because I love Veronica!”

Jughead slaps his hand hard across his forehead. “Jesus Christ—you can’t love her, you don’t even know her!” He yells, but as he hears the words come out, they sound oddly like a lie.

“Oh, yeah? What the hell do you know about it, Jug?” Archie snaps, his arms crossed. “You’ve never even been in love! Because you’re too much of a coward to ever try!”

“I’m not a coward,” he hisses, even as he feels as though he’s been sucker punched. A car drives by, the headlights passing over them as Jughead’s chest begins to stutter. He’s not a coward, he’s got issues. There’s a difference. Right?

“Yes, you fucking are,” Archie seethes. “Or it wouldn’t have taken you a million years to make a move on Betty when you were so clearly into her from the start. I mean, dude, have you even told her that you like her yet?”

“I—” Jughead feels all the words and breath leave his lungs all at once. “She knows I like her.”

“Have you actually told her that, though?” Archie scoffs. “Because Veronica said that Betty was really confused about what you wanted.”

He inhales sharply, indignation surging. “What the hell, do you guys talk about us? It’s none of your fucking business what—”

“Veronica was just asking because she wanted to look out for Betty, because she’s a good friend and a kind, protective person,” Archie interrupts, scowling madly. “And the woman I love.”

“You’ve known her for three weeks!” Jughead yells, almost delirious with exasperation. “You cannot love her! It doesn’t work like that!”

“Tell me how it works, then,” he snarls. “Go ahead. Enlighten your much stupider friend with a-a-all you know about love.”

His mouth opens and closes once. “It…takes work, and time—you—you compromise and grow, you don’t just—”

“That’s just a relationship,” Archie interrupts, smug with dark satisfaction for the moment wherein he understands something that Jughead doesn’t. “Love is the feeling when you look at someone, or how you feel when they walk in a room. It’s the way I know I’m not ready to say goodbye to her. You’d know that, if you ever even tried.”

He realizes Archie is right, and it sends his blood boiling. That kind of love is the thing one he’s always craved and all the while justified not looking for because it always felt so unattainably complicated, like a riddle with no end, and it cannot be that obvious or that simple. It just can’t.

He wants to punch Archie.

“Fuck you,” he says instead, and because he can’t admit to anything else. Jughead turns on his heel and storms away, with no destination in mind as long as it’s far fucking away from Archie and his childish fantasies about love and life.

“Yeah, well, fuck you too!” Archie shouts at his back.

His feet carry him past Veronica’s apartment, past Pop’s, past the turn off for Betty’s street, and onwards into the night. He stomps up the stairs to his motel room and slams the door shut loudly behind him, his fist punching uselessly once at the wall when that doesn’t satisfy him. He curses loudly and slides down onto the floor.

Later, he realizes he never actually popped the bubble.

In the end, Archie did.

#bughead #bughead fanfiction #betty x jughead #betty cooper #jughead jones #yea that's right y'girl wrote an entire opening monologue about BUBBLES #she is not fucking around #and it's also!!! another!!!#eight!!!#thousand!!!! words!!!!!!#long!!!#who is she #what does she want #heart rise above #fics

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ohkinney · 8 years ago

Text

thank you thank you thank you

So I just reached my next thousand and I am.... speechless. This is CRAZY. I made this blog in 2012 and all I wanted to do was express my love for this show through my gifsets and posts. It was definitely much smaller than any other fandom I had ever been in at the time but I think that’s also what made me feel so welcome.

There were some people I ended up talking to and becoming friends with but some that I never talked to and just simply admired. A lot of these blogs are inactive now but every single one of them has made me what I am today. I figured I should show my appreciation for a majority of these people. I will DEFINITELY miss out on a few people because the list is, believe it or not, quite long despite the size of the fandom. Anyway, here I go! (this is in no particular order btw)

I’m gonna start with @kinneysexual. Oh my goodness. Where do I even begin with Cami? When I joined the fandom, I think you were probably the most popular qaf blog/giffer (well you were to me, anyway). I was SO inspired by all your wonderful and unique gifsets and I’m pretty sure I would just stare and stare at them for hours when I could. I’m not kidding, I was so so so impressed and in awe of your talent and ideas. I don’t think we ever talked privately but anytime you reblogged one of my sets or mentioned me in a post, I would just DIE of happiness because you were honestly my QUEEN hahahaha. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have gone on a massive giffing spree when I made this blog. Thank you.

@kinneys. What the hell would I have done without your BEAUTIFUL qaf edits? I ain’t playing, y’all. Alice would take a few screencaps from the most difficult show to colour, put them together and turn them into ART. FUCKING ART. HOW???? I JUST DON’T KNOW TO THIS DAY. THANK YOU for making the show look a million times prettier than it actually is. Your skill also inspired me to edit even though I was never and will never be as talented as you are. Thank you.

@kinneyism. You are absolutely brilliant. In a way, your gifs are DECEIVING because you look at them and you’re like “wow! this show looks nice! It seems like the type of show that wouldn’t be complete torture to colour!” Well NOPE. YOU JUST HAVE MAGIC POWERS. I’m not kidding, while you inspired me to make gifs, I also felt extremely intimidated by you and would sometimes think well, what was the point of even trying to make gifs when art like yours already existed. But I pushed myself anyway and I never ever would have without your help! Thank you.

@bottomvich. Another amazing, talented person. You were one of my biggest inspirations in this fandom. I don’t know what else to say other than thank you for blessing us with your gifs and edits. Your edits were gorgeous enough and then you gave us A LOT gifsets and just wow. I’m glad that I found your blog and that you were one of the people I really looked up to. Thank you. (also I’m pretty sure I’ve reblogged every single one of your qaf edits)

@celebrate-the-victories. SARAH!!!!! This is super cute ok but I did a lil bit of research and I’m pretty sure this is the first post of yours that I reblogged. So basically in four years, the tags I leave on your sets are still exactly the same??? Why am I not surprised????? OKAY MOVING ON TO THE MUSHY MESSAGE. Your blog REALLY stuck out to me. I was mostly seeing these really great Brian/Justin edits and I loved them but YOU. You posted these GORGEOUS gifsets of Ted/Blake, sets of them I had never seen giffed before and coloured with such a distinct style that made my heart warm. I was so happy that I found your blog and I’m so so so damn happy that you’re one of the few I followed at the start and are still active in the fandom and still posting these unique Ted/Blake sets that make me wanna die. NEVER EVER CHANGE. You are truly wonderful. Thank you. And I lowkey always wanted to be your friend BAHAHAH but I don’t think I ever actually reached out to you. GURL LOOK AT US NOW, CALLIN EACH OTHER BY NAME IN TAGS AND POSTS. 2012 ME WOULDA BEEN SCREAMIN (2017 me is still screaming what am i talking about)

@xchelspaige. Chelsee! You were one of the first blogs I followed, I think. And I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. Your gifs have always been gorgeous to me. But following you for this long, I witnessed your gifs getting better and better, prettier and prettier. The fact that you’re still making and posting your beautiful gifs l just.... This fandom is so lucky to have someone as nice and talented as you in it. Thank you.

@queerasfcuk. Okay, wow. I don’t know how to put this... You have made some of the BEST gifsets I have ever seen for this show. Oh my goodness. Your talent and creativity BLOWS MY MIND. All your sets have thousands of notes but you deserve millions! You were one of the blogs that both inspired me and intimidated me! I love everything about your gifs from the font you use, the way you sharpen them, their speed, the colouring, EVERYTHING. Can we all take a moment to appreciate these ICONIC gifsets though???: x x x. I appreciate all the effort you put into creating sets like those, I know I couldn’t do it. I can’t even tell you how much you really inspired me. Thank you.

@ksica. ONE WORD: HOW??!?! Just the other day, I was stalking my own blog (LMAO) and in one page, I reblogged a bunch of your qaf sets in a row and holy wow.... You have the most distinct colouring style on this entire site, I think? I’ll see a gorgeous and vibrant set and I’ll just know it’s yours. I don’t remember if I initially followed you for doctor who or queer as folk but damn I’m pretty sure you can colour ANYTHING. You are sosososososoososososo talented and I wish my qaf gifs were at least near your level. And you’re also just ridiculously nice??? Your entire blog is everything I aspire to be hahahahahaha. Thank you.

@candlewinds. JEEEEESS!!!!!!!!! I miss you SO much wow! I don’t think I followed you until I was maybe in the fandom for like two years or so??? But I remember seeing a bunch of your edits and just being completely amazed and inspired by you. You don’t wanna get me started on your gifsets PLS. You were one of the people with superpowers. The powers to make a 144p show look 720p. I CANNOT TELL YOU what your blog meant to me oh my god. I think you’re one of the first few friends I really made in this fandom and I’m so glad we really ended up talking instead of just reblogging each other’s posts and talking to each other through tags HAHAHAHA. You are, without a doubt, one of THE nicest people I have had the privilege of meeting. I remember we became friends then I went on a massive hiatus and when I came back, you were one of the first people to talk to me and you said something really sweet like “I’m so glad to see you on my dash again!!” and it made me so happy to be back. Thank you.

@justintaylor. OKAY, LISTEN, LAURA. I LOVE YA AND I HATE YA. HERE IS WHY. I REMEMBER THE EXACT MOMENT I FIRST SAW ONE OF YOUR QAF GIFSETS. I was literally in SHOCK. I was like “wait........wait... why the hell does this look like it was giffed from a 1080p download/blu-ray dvds??? those don’t... exist for this show???” And so I stalked your blog for hours a lil bit and my jealous ass found out you had the dvds and I was FUMING ASIDHASOIDHAISHI I don’t think I had the desire to buy the box set until I saw your gifs tbh?????? I miss your qaf gifs so much though! I still think your sets are some of the prettiest in this fandom ever!! Maybe one day, I will make it to your level <3333

@itsbriankinney. LEIRE! I wonder if you’re sick of me praising your gifs at this point HAHAHAH IDC IMMA PRAISE THEM FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. I already had the dvds when I followed you and I might as well BURN THEM ALL tbh. You don’t have the dvds and yet your gifs are better quality than mine will ever be lmao ashiahsiohasduaiasdhi and I can’t even hate you for it because you’re only the sweetest person on this planet omfg. I’m so grateful to call you one of my friends on here like I feel honestly BLESSED hahahahaha. I’ve only been talking to your for a short time but for some reason, I trust you with my life??? And I feel like you’ll always have my back and that’s such a nice feeling to have??? At first, I loved your blog for your qaf gifs but now I love you for so much more! I also realised we watch a lot of the same shows and share the same opinions and ships which is a plus! Thank you for being so kind to me. I hope you know by now that I will always be here for you!

And last but definitely not least, @xoxoemynn. The first post of yours I saw was a response to an ask. I don’t remember which one it was but I remember being so in awe of how well you wrote. So obviously I had to stalk your blog for days and read as many of your analyses of the show/britin as I could. Yeah, I got nothing I needed to do done during those times bahahaha. TOTALLY WORTH IT THOUGH. I’m pretty sure ever since I found your blog, I desperately wanted to be your friend lmaooooo. So when you first messaged me, I was honestly fangirling, I’m not kidding. FANGIRLING. AND LOOK AT US NOW!! ACTUAL children laughing about things only CHILDREN laugh about iadhaishiashdaih and sending each other screenshots and talking like teenagers in high school and tbh I wouldn’t have it any other way. I also can’t think of anyone else I would have wanted to go through my biggest Tumblr drama with AHAHAHAHAH. You made me almost cry laughing during a time I probably should not have been laughing oh my god. I cannot imagine what I would have done without you. YOU ARE JUST SO GENUINE AND WONDERFUL AND I CAN’T BELIEVE I AM LUCKY ENOUGH TO BE ABLE TO SAY “EMY IS MY FRIEND GUYS”. Thank you so much for your generosity and for making me laugh and for being there for me and for existing. Ily <3

Unfortunately, some of the blogs I wanted to mention have deactivated and/or changed their urls and I don’t recognise them anymore. But just know, there were a lot more people who are in this list. And I’m so so so grateful for every single one of them. Thank you for making my time in this fandom nothing but wonderful. I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!

#celebrate-the-victories #xoxoemynn #itsbriankinney #xchelspaige #ksica #aaaand tagging everyone else would unfortunately be pointless #but seriously #i love you guys #i was getting so emotional typing this out #drink everytime elyse says thank you #<333333333 #*#also whatever i aint putting this under a read more bhahahahah sorry everyone #edit: i cant believe i said i was speechless like i obviously aint aihsaishdiash #edit 2: i didnt proof read this so if there are any mistakes feel free to roast me #edit 3: im on like page 200 of my blog and im realising just how many people i actually missed #but it's okay bc this post was long enough y'all get the point im grateful af for everyone

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ashamedofmytrash · 8 years ago

Text

Dirt and Bikes

CH 2

You are Australian in the fallout of the omnium explosion, you gotta live day to day, then Junkers happen and suddenly you have people to watch your back. also you have a name now enjoy ^_^

Words: 1876, Chapters: 2/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Overwatch (Video Game)

Rating: imma say M, potential nsfw themes

Warnings: Mention of death, some swearing, mention of sexual acts

Categories: fluff, could become nsfw haven’t decided yet

Relationships: Junkrat | Jamison Fawkes/F!Reader, Roadhog | Mako Rutledge/F!Reader, Junkrat | Jamison Fawkes/Roadhog | Mako Rutledge/F!Reader, poly roadrat

Small and cute

Two words that were over and over in Mako’s brain as he silently watched you while simultaneously ‘listening’ to Jamie go on and on about setting off some bombs here and there and making off with as much as they could carry tomorrow morning. You were propped up on an elbow still blinking sleep from your eyes, when you had finally seemed to wake up enough to realise what was happening you had exchanged some words with the person next to you, Mako didn’t like that, he knew what the two of you were talking about, hell he knew what everyone in the camp was whispering “Junkrat and Roadhog the number one cause of death and destruction in the outback” not that he was complaining that the entire camp was terrified, it allowed them peace and quiet, no one in their right mind would disturb them and Mako might finally get some sleep, if Jamie ever shut up that is.

But here you were across from the both of them, all tucked up cosy like, Mako’s heart could barely take it, you were adorable and Mako had no problem admitting to himself that cute things were the best, he loved little pigs, soft toys and cute things just because he was the towering death of the outback didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the softer things life had to offer.

He hadn’t realised he had been staring until your eyes locked with his, well you had actually just noticed his mask was pointed in your direction, and the look on your face changed, you suddenly looked terrified, like you were ready to run. He was used to this, he’d see someone adorable and then frighten them off before he ever got the chance to speak to them, not this time though, he thought, he had to do something that wouldn’t frighten you. Before he knew what he was doing he gave an enthusiastic ‘thumbs up’.

Your face had changed again to confusion this time, until you returned the gesture with a small hint of a smile on your mouth after a short time you settled back down and seemed to fall asleep.

“I see what you’re lookin’ at Hog, she’s cute, you like cute hehehehehe”

Roadhog hadn’t even noticed Junkrat had stopped talking until he started again, to be fair Hog put Rat’s voice in the category of fuzzy background noise now, only really listening when the words ‘money’ and ‘heist’ were thrown in.

“…….”

“Maybe we should go talk to uh’, I think she’s pretty too y’know”

“Go to sleep”

“Yeah ya’ right mate, sleep now, talk to the pretty girl and explode stuff tomorrow”

Junkrat added enthusiastic finger guns for emphasis, Roadhog just lay down and let his eyes close he was going to make the most of not having to build their fire tonight, eventually he heard Junkrat settle down beside him and finally drifted off to sleep.

It was just beginning to get light when you woke up it must have been about 6am, judging by the movement around the camp people seemed eager to be getting going, you knew why of course the two Junkers would surely let off some bombs and Molotov cocktails before they left, best to be out with the early crew. You sat up and began folding your blanket to put back into your bag, glancing across to where the Junkers had slept for the night you saw Roadhog still asleep but Junkrat was gone, oh shit no wonder people were bee-lining for their vehicles.

“Mornin’ love whatchya got in the bag huh?”

The voice next to you was far too close and you only managed to choke down your scream knowing who the voice belonged to but the look on your face must’ve given away how startled you actually were, turning your body to face him you found yourself locked eyes with Junkrat who was crouching beside you with his face far too close to yours, personal space certainly wasn’t a requirement in outback society but always appreciated, this kid obviously didn’t care for it.

“Not much of a talker huh? That’s okay listen I wanna ask ya somethin’ yeah?”

“…yeah”

“HA! She does talk! Me names Junkrat nice ta’ meet ya”

he extended a metal hand and reluctantly you returned yours for a firm handshake.

“Trigger, nice ta meet you too”

you couldn’t decide if the smile on his face was a good or bad sign, never the less you smiled back just as enthusiastically until you realised you’d been shaking hands for longer than intended to abruptly letting go.

“So anyways me n’ Hog wa thinkin’ that maybe you need some company travelling to wherever ya goin’ hmmm?”

Oh shit, this had happened to you before, people offer protection on the road for favours which nearly always had something to do with your body, what if you said no, would they just kill you right now? Oh shit you were taking too long to answer oh god now you’re sweating oh shit the look on your face must have given away your thought process

“Hey hey calm down love, this is a legit offer, no sex required, although if you do got any water or food it wouldn’t go unappreciated whaddya say?”

“ummmmm……. well I…. uhhhhhhh”

You hadn’t noticed the heavy footsteps behind you, it was when you heard the heavy breathing that you turned again to see Roadhog standing behind you; his stature was intimidating and coupled with the fact that you were all of 5 ft something and still sitting you were sure that if he wanted to he could crush you beneath one big boot.

“AHHHH HOGGY I SEE YOU’RE UP I WAS JUST MAKING FRIENDS!”

Junkrat’s voice yelling pretty much in your ear made you jump yet again, as if it wasn’t enough that you were already so on edge, you could feel your anxiety creeping up in your chest making your lungs tight and your heart beat even faster. You looked back up at Roadhog and attempted the same smile you’d given him last night, you knew that there was fear in your eyes and trying to hide it was borderline painful. Roadhog only continued to stare down at you with his head tilted slightly until you were almost violently grabbed by your shoulders and forced to turn back to face Junkrat.

“So! What’s the answer? You want some protection or what?”

“Rat!”

Roadhog’s voice silenced Junkrat’s immediately and judging by Junkrat’s face you gathered that Roadhog couldn’t’ve been too happy with the conversation.

“I’m sorry miss, Rat lets go”

“AWWWW!!! C’mon Hog! I was jus’ bein’ nice!”

You thought about your options as Roadhog grabbed Junkrat’s good arm about to drag him away. Oh god what were you getting yourself into

“Hey wait!” your voice was shaky and just loud enough for both of them to hear

“……...ummmm actually I wouldn’t mind some road protection, and I do also have some spare food and water that I can pay you with”

you were sure Junkrat’s face was almost splitting with how wide his smile was, Roadhog however still had his back to you but he had stopped, you slowly stood up and began to walk towards the two; Roadhog let go of Rat’s am and the smaller scrambled to his foot as Roadhog turned to you. Before you knew what was happening Junkrat had his arm around your shoulders leading you towards the vehicles area.

“Oh this is gonna be great! Don’t you worry ya’ pretty little head we’re the best of the best ain’t no one gonna mess with ya’ while you’re with us!”

Roadhog watched as Rat lead you past him, he was going to kill his boss later Junkrat was impulsive and Hog really would have preferred to know how many weapons you had before offering anything, still, you were pretty small and if push came to shove Hog could surely snap your neck real quick before you did any damage, plus you did look pretty scared of them so he figured you wouldn’t even try anything, and not that he’d ever admit it to Rat but he was kinda’ happy that you’d taken the offer.

As you reached the area you’d parked your bike the night before you saw an empty space where your bike had previously been parked

“WHAT THE FUCK SOMEONE TOOK MY BIKE! WHO THE HELL STOLE MY SHIT!?” glancing around you saw people looking away from you, you realised you were still standing with Junkrat and Roadhog, of course no one was going to talk, not with those two there.

“Hey hey calm down love its fine, you can still ride with us its all good, we’ll find ya a place to get a new bike yeah?”

You turned to Junkrat with tears threatening to spill over, you couldn’t believe it, you’d had that bike since you could remember and now it was just gone.

“C’mon”

You heard Roadhog’s deep voice and felt his massive hand on your shoulder and turned you towards their bike. It was huge! And of course a Hog, call the junkers what you would you couldn’t deny they didn’t have good taste. You watched as the smaller junker bounded to the bike and practically dived into the side car fidgeting until he seemed to get comfortable.

“C’mon c’mon! letsgoletsgoletsgo!”

Roadhog and yourself walked over to the bike and as Roadhog sat down you wondered where you would fit, there didn’t look like much room left on there.

“uhhhh where will I sit?” your voice was quiet and sheepish

They both looked at you before Roadhog scooched forward and pat the seat behind him, you lifted your leg over the bike and did your best to get comfy, there wasn’t a great deal of room and you felt kind of squished, as Roadhog started up the engine it roared load and intimidating, just like the hog himself, it was much more powerful than any bike you had ever ridden and it did startle you a bit, you ended up throwing your arms around Roadhog before you really realised what you were doing feeling the man tense under your touch you loosened your grip, you muffled out a sorry that was far too soft to reach anyone’s ears under the loud rumble of the bike, you did however manage to pick up a “Hold on tight” from Roadhog before the bike tore out of the campsite.

You sure were holding on for dear life as Junkrat’s manic laughter could be heard next to you in the side car, you turned to face him and saw he had a detonator in his hand, thank crap you’d taken their offer, Junkrat turned to you and you saw the malicious smirk that was now on his face before he slammed his thumb down on the red button; and here you thought the bike was loud, behind you was the sound of multiple explosions detonating in succession, looking back to Junkrat you saw him laughing hysterically again, you hug tighter to Roadhog as you try to shake the thought that this was definitely going to be how you die.

#poly roadrat #still not yet poly #but you have spoken to them now yay!#junkrat reader #roadhog reader #dirt and bikes #feedback is always welcome

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