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miraculouswolf99 · 4 years

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Breaking Into The Watchtower Part 1

Miraculous Ladybug-DC Universe crossovers are some of my favorite fanfictions. They are just a good match. I especially love ones where the Justice League either ignores the Paris situation or one of the League members gets the messages for help and doesn’t believe them. Mostly, it’s the Flash, Guy Gardner, Green Lantern, or Booster Gold.

In this story, some of the miraculous have changed hands for my story. There will be new holders and different holders for old miraculous. All of my OC characters will also be included. Nathaniel has the fox, Marc has the turtle, Rose has the horse, Juleka has the tiger, and Alix will have the bunny.

*****

“This is most definitely not something that I would ever have thought that I would ever do,” White Wolf says.

“We are magical teenagers that use the power of mini gods and mystical jewelry,” Beautifly says. “Your statement pretty much sums up every day of our lives.”

“Trust me, I never thought that I would be doing anything like this before I met Plagg,” Cat Noir said.

“At least I can cross this off my bucket list,” Ladybug giggled.

“Why is the name of the Olympian gods would this be on your bucket list,” White Wolf looked at the teen hero weirdly.

“I put it on after they started to ignore our cries for help,” Ladybug crossed her arms. “Or, when it was made obvious that they were ignoring us, at least.”

“How much sleep have you gotten lately,” Beautifly asks. “You only get this sassy when you haven’t slept in about two days.”

“I remember going to sleep on Wednesday,” Ladybug put her hand on her chin as she started thinking.

“Uh… It’s Saturday,” White Wolf deadpanned.

“Oh,” was all Ladybug could say.

“If you don’t go right to sleep after we get back, I am sending Plagg over to destroy every device you have to make sure you are not distracted and can finally sleep,” Cat Noir threatened.

“But what if there is an akuma,” Ladybug protested.

“Then we will have to make sure that Cat Noir saves his power so that he can Cataclysm the moth when it comes out of the akumatized object,” White Wolf says.

“And the damage,” Ladybug continued to protest.

“We will get to that when we get there,” White Wolf said.

“You are sometimes too selfless for your own good,” Beautifly shook her head.

“Yeah, she tends to be like that,” Cat Noir chuckled. “Why do you think I force myself between her and the villains we face when she tries to protect me because she will take the hit for me. But she needs to be the one that the attack does not hit because she is the one that purifies the akuma.”

“We are a very colorful crew,” Beautifly giggled.

“Says the butterfly girl whose hero outfit is almost entirely black,” White Wolf said.

“Not my fault that Flutter is a monarch butterfly kwami,” Beautifly shrugged.

“I certainly wish that I had some color on my suit,” Cat Noir says. “While the black makes my eyes pop, the color doesn’t match my personality at all. Why couldn’t Plagg be a tabby cat or a white cat?”

“Because he is the literal god of bad luck and nobody thinks of either of those two other kinds of cats when bad luck comes to mind,” Ladybug stated. “Deal with it, Chaton.”

“Yeah, you really need some sleep before you become permanently sassy,” Beautifly says.

“I blame Hawkmoth and his never-ending late-night akumas,” White Wolf stated. “My ears are still ringing from that banshee akuma he created last week.”

“And talk about unoriginal,” Cat Noir rolled his eyes. “Scream Queen was probably the most obvious choice of name in the history of villain names.”

“Even more so than that Poison Ivy woman in Gotham,” Beautifly asked.

“Well, she could have called herself Mother Nature,” Cat Noir shrugged.

“Point made,” Beautifly said.

The four then looked at the rest of their teams preparing themselves for what was going to be done. The Greek hero team had stayed the same throughout the three years of fighting, but the French team had changed. Their current members were Vulpix, Emerald Turtle, Queen Bee, Viperion, Lady Unicorn, King Monkey, Ryuko, Shadow Cat, and Bunnix. The last two being the newest members of the hero team. The Greek team was Gladiator with the grizzly bear miraculous, Tigress with the leopard miraculous, and Ocean Mage with the mermaid miraculous. The last one being the only person to be currently using a magical creature miraculous on the planet.

All of the heroes were getting ready in their own ways. Ryuko, Ocean Mage, and Viperion were meditating. King Monkey, Bunnix, Tigress, and Gladiator were all getting themselves hyped up for the mission. Queen Bee was trying to find a way to take off her gloves to file her nails. Vulpix and Emerald Shell were cuddling, comforting each other, and probably trying really hard not to start making out. The same could be said about Shadow Cat and Lady Unicorn. Those four were always the more timid ones of the group, even though all of them were amazing heroes.

“Alright, does everyone remember their parts of the plan,” Ladybug asked them, snapping them out of their trances.

“I will make sure that everything goes smoothly and no one truly gets hurt,” Viperion says.

“White Wolf, Lady Unicorn, and I take out our biggest worries to being discovered before we are ready,” Bunnix added.

“The rest of us force them into a position where they have to listen to us,” Gladiator said.

The rest of the team nodded in agreement. Some of them were still looking nervous about what they were about to do.

“Are you sure doing this is the right thing to do,” Lady Unicorn asked. “We could get into serious trouble for this.”

“We wouldn’t be doing this at all if they stopped ignoring us,” Tigress crossed her arms. “Even with all these miraculous being active, Hawmoth’s akumas are getting more and more dangerous.”

“He is also akumatizing more dangerous people like con artists, martial artists, and policemen,” Ocean Mage says. “What’s to stop him from going all Scarlet Moth and sending his moths to a prison if he gets desperate enough?”

“That is why we need their help,” Ladybug said. “If contacting them through official means does not help, then we must do what we have to.”

“I just hope that we don’t get labeled as criminals for this,” Beautifly said.

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

If there was one thing that Robin currently was, it was bored. He had to stop himself from yawning as he sat in another long and boring meeting of the Justice League.

One would think that a young hero like him would not be a part of one of these meetings. But this was less of a war room and more of a meeting between all heroes to discuss general things involving heroes in general and not entirely league business. It was always the same things being discussed in these meetings. Egotistical politicians trying to control the league, villains breaking out of prison again, as well as discussing potential new members of the League and the Young Justice team.

Other than Robin, the rest of the Bat-family was there as well. Batman, Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, Oracle, Spoiler, Orphan, Batwing, and even Batwoman. The Super family was also there. Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, and the former Superboy that now called himself Krypton. Robin smirked at how Conner had finally broken the trend of having “Super” in his hero name. He may be a clone, he knew that both Kara and Jon both adored him. The other young heroes that were there were Red Arrow, Artemis, Aqualad, Tempest, Miss. Martian, Beast Boy, Starfire, Zatanna, Kid Flash, and Impulse.

And other than Batman and Superman, there were also the mentors of the other young heroes as well. Green Arrow, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Dr.Fate, and the Flash. The other adult heroes in the room were Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Wonder Woman, Sparton, Black Canary, Red Tornado, all three Green Lanterns, Black Lightning, Captain Marvel, Captain Atom, the Atom, and Katanna.

As Robin looked around, he noticed that he was not the only bored-looking young hero. The entire Bat-family looked to be wanting to be anywhere else, especially since they lived in a city where a crime was committed every five seconds. But the other heroes that looked bored were Superboy, Krypton, Red Arrow, Aqualad, and Beast Boy. They were all probably like him. They were excited to be part of league meetings until it was discovered that there was a lot more politics involved than actual hero work.

“Does anyone have anything else that they would like to add,” Superman asked the room.

“How about we talk about actually saving people instead of dealing with politicians,” Nightwing muttered, making the Bat-family hide their snickers.

“Especially that psycho Lex Luthor,” Krypton muttered from his place next to Nightwing.

“Well, if that is all…” Superman was about to wrap up the meeting.

“Wait,” Zatanna shot up from her seat, her hands on her head. “I sense something.”

All the younger heroes were all now thinking how something interesting was finally going to happen during one of these meetings. But the heroes were also all reaching for their weapons if they had them.

“What is it,” Wonder Woman asked the magician, her hand on her sword.

“There is an incoming magical…” Zatanna was cut off.

A bright blue portal opened up right under her feet. She fell in before she could finish her warning. The portal closed right after she fell into it.

“What in the world,” Flash gasped.

“ZATANNA,” the members of Young Justice yelled their former team member’s name.

“Oracle,” Batman did not even have to say the entire order.

“I’m on it,” the wheelchair-bound hero immediately started typing on her holographic computer. “She’s… I can’t find her.”

“What do you mean you can’t find her,” Captain Atom demanded to know.

“It’s like she vanished into thin air,” Oracle continued typing. “She’s nowhere in the Watchtower, or on Earth, not even on my planet in our galaxy. There is no sign of Zatanna anywhere.”

“She managed to say that it was something magical that was approaching,” Wonder Woman says.

“Dr. Fate, can you do something,” Superman requested of the lord of order.

The master sorcerer stood up from his seat. While he, personally, did not care for Zatanna other than a fellow user of the mystic arts, his current host body was that of her father. So finding her will hopefully silence all the yelling that Zatara is currently doing inside of the helmet.

But before the lord of order could do anything, another portal opened up behind him. But unlike the bright blue of the first one, this portal was a ring of blue surrounding a white portal. Something had quickly reached through and Dr.Fate was instantly turned into an ice statue. An invisible figure sneaked through the portal before it closed.

This caused all the other league members and Young Justice members to all jump and, drawing their weapons or preparing their powers. They all looked around and were on guard just in case another portal opened up.

“Oracle,” Batman ordered her again.

She was typing as quickly as humanly possible.

“I can’t find anyone else in the Watchtower,” she said, still typing. “I’ve run heat scans, x-ray scans, even the program to search for invisible opponents. I still can not find anyone else in the Watchtower.”

A soft tune suddenly played throughout the room. It was like a theme song for a peaceful day in the Fall played on a flute. A ball of light soon soared to the end of the room and brightly flashed. When the flash died down, the heroes were all shocked to see a message had been written in light in the air.

“We Just Want To Talk.”

It floated there for about a minute before Superman and Maritan Manhunter flew over to the message to examine it. But the moment that one of them touched it, it vanished in a burst of orange smoke-like light.

“It was an illusion,” Nightwing was the first to realize it.

“Maybe that is how they are hiding,” Red Robin opened up his own holographic screen over his glove and started typing. “Under an illusion.”

“And if they are magical like Zatanna said, it would not be possible to detect them since the technology that can detect magic has not been invented yet,” Oracle added.

“There is no such thing as magic,” yelled out Kid Flash.

Young Justice rolled their eyes, used to the constant rants that the speedster goes on about his disbelief in magic. It certainly annoyed those like Aqualad and Tempest, who both were born in Atlantis and attended the conservatory of sorcery there. Few other magical heroes tolerated the loud-mouth. Which was why heroes like Phantom and his brother Gold Siren wanted nothing to do with the team. (Reference to my fanfictions on Wattpad, Phantom Music and Home.)

“Try to find out where the illusion came from,” Superman ordered.

“You could try looking right in front of you,” a female voice was suddenly heard.

The heroes all turned and saw three masked teenagers standing there. Two boys and a girl.

The first boy was a redhead with his bangs covering his right eye. He had on a fox-themed skin-tight orange and white outfit with red boots, gloves, and a red jacket. He also had real fox ears and a real fox tail as well. A flute was strapped to his back.

The boy next to him had black hair with green tips, which matched his turtle-themed outfit. The outfit also had a dark green leather jacket and boots with a green shield on his back, going with the goggle-like mask over his eyes.

The girl was blond with a single black streak in her ponytail. Her outfit was definitely themed by bumblebees. But unlike the shoes of the two next to her, her shoes had a slight heal to them. Like a two-inch-high wedge heel. Around her waist was a spinning top on a string.

“What have you done to our allies,” Captain Atom demanded of them.

“They are perfectly fine,” the turtle boy informed them.

“Why should we believe you,” Robin held his katana in his hand.

“Because we need your help and harming your fellow heroes would not help our situation,” the fox boy crossed his arms.

“What could you possibly need from us,” Black Lightning’s hands sparked with his powers.

“How about for you to stop ignoring us while we have been fighting a terrorist for three years,” the bee girl yelled at them.

“We also are not lying,” the fox boy said. “We have no reason to lie when surrounded by most of the world’s heroes.”

Before they could say anything else, all three were surrounded by separate green spheres that floated them up into the air. The Green Lanterns all had their rings pointed at one of the masked teens.

“This is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous,” the bee girl complained as she crossed her arms.

“I got captured by the original Green Lantern,” the fox boy looked to be almost fanboying inside of his sphere.

“Lucky, I got that class clown Guy Gardner,” the turtle boy almost seemed to pout.

“Hey,” Guy Gardner protested, offended.

“Why are you here, where is Zatanna, and what did you do to Dr. Fate,” Superman demanded of the three as he flew close to them.

“You know, you are a lot less threatening than you think you are,” the bee girl stated with a smirk. “By the way, whoever told you that underwear on the outside of your pants was a good choice needs to be thrown into fashion jail.”

Most of the Young Justice team had to stop themselves from laughing. Even Superboy, Supergirl, and Krypton were trying not to laugh. They had no idea who this girl was, but she was certainly sassy.

“How did you get into the Watchtower undetected,” Superman continued to demand answers from them.

“That is for us to know,” the fox boy started.

“And you to find out,” the turtle boy finished.

The smirks the three had told the league something, alright. Batman was the first to realize what it meant.

“There are more of them,” he said.

As if him saying that was their cue to come in, three more masked teens almost seemed to materialize into the room. A guy in a monkey-themed outfit hit his Ruyi Jingu Bang against the ground and then threw it into the air.

“Uproar,” he yelled.

He threw his now glowing staff into the air, the staff letting out a flash as it spun in the air. With a swift flick of her lasso, Wonder Woman grabbed the weapon before it could fall back into the monkey boy’s hand. But something else fell into his hands that they did not see.

But then came the second masked teen, who looked like he had been born of the ocean. He took out what seemed to be a hilt made out of sapphire. Water came out of the hilt as the masked boy flicked his wrist, the water forming into a whip. Before they could move, the teen whipped all of the Green Lantern’s hands at once. Pulling his whip, the masked teen caused their hands to collide together.

That was when the monkey boy threw the object that he had caught out of the air. Katana was close enough to try and slice through it with her sword, but she was intercepted by a second masked girl, this one appearing out of nowhere and seemed to have a tiger theme to her. Even if she was purple and black and not orange and black. Katana’s sword was met with a metal tiger-claw gauntlet. While they fought, a bunny-themed girl showed up and intercepted Green and Red Arrow, fighting both archers at once. Then, to the shock of the Green Lantern trio, a stuffed octopus child’s toy landed on their connected hands.

For a moment, nothing happened and they wondered why a stuffed animal had been thrown at them. But then their rings all started to malfunction at once. The rings stopped glowing and all three trapped teens were released from their bubbles. And since the rings were no longer working, the Lanterns all fell to the ground without their ability to fly.

“We’re teenagers, not stupid,” the bee girl smirked.

No longer wanting to underestimate the masked teens, the big hitters of the league all started to move toward them. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Red Tornado, and Captain Atom.

“Venom,” the bee girl shouted.

The top in her hand seemed to grow a bit in size and start glowing. As Superman flew at her, she dodged him and managed to touch him with her top. He fell to the ground and did not move from his punching pose. He was paralyzed.

“Confusion,” a female voice shouted.

Wonder Woman turned around to almost immediately be scratched on her arm by a girl in a leopard-themed outfit. The scratch on her arm glowed purple and the hero suddenly became very dizzy and could not seem to focus. She had never been drunk before, but she was sure this was probably how it felt.

Captain Atom’s hands lit up as he aimed one of his energy blasts at the masked teens. As he was just about to blast, another masked teen appeared. This one was themed by a brown-furred bear. Probably a grizzly bear.

“Roar,” a male voice yelled just as Captain Atom blasted.

The bear boy’s fist lit up gold and he punched right into the energy beam. To the surprise of the league, he was able to keep the beam at bay with a single punch.

Red Tornado was about to throw one of his twisters when he was hit on his robot head by a thrown horseshoe. It bounced and flew around like a boomerang-gone-wild until it landed back in the hand of a horse-themed girl.

All of the heroes and masked teens in the room were either fighting or dodging the attacks of another from one of the other groups.

“Enough,” a male and female voice shouted at once.

Even the Justice League froze as the voices boomed throughout the room. Standing on the other side of the room were six more masked teens. Three boys and three girls. The two that had shouted were a ladybug-themed girl and a boy with an icy wolf outfit. The boy standing next to the ladybug girl looked to be related to Catwoman while the girl next to the wolf boy was like a butterfly turned human. The last two were a snake boy and a girl that looked to be dragon-themed.

“All of you, front and center, now,” the ladybug girl ordered.

All of the animal-themed teens stopped what they were doing immediately. They put their weapons away and walked over to join the others at her sides.

Wonder Woman looked at the group for a few moments. The drunk feeling had been lifted from her and she could focus. There was something about them that was making an old memory of her’s rise to the surface. An old story that her mother used to tell her about when she had been friends with, who she had called, an adorable and wise little creature known as a kwami. A creature that she also remembered was bound to a magical object called a miraculous.

“The ladybug and black cat are active once more,” she gasped.

The league looked at the Amazon princess in shock. She actually had an idea who these teens were.

“We thought that you would be the one to recognize our magic, Wonder Woman,” the ladybug girl softly smiles.

Wonder Woman approached the group, putting her sword away as she did. And surprising the league again, she bowed to the ladybug girl and cat boy. The two of them and the wolf boy and butterfly girl bow back.

“It is an honor to meet the wielder of the ladybug miraculous,” Wonder Woman said.

“The honor is all ours, daughter of Hippolyta,” the ladybug girl says. “Tikki says to tell your mother ‘hi’ for her.”

Wonder Woman smiled at that.

“Would you care to explain exactly what is going on,” Batman ordered them, crossing his arms. “Starting with where Zatanna is and what you did to Dr. Fate and Superman.”

The bunny girl got out a pocket watch from her pocket. She checks the time.

“We can answer the first question now,” she smirked. “We’re right on time.”

She put her watch away and then threw her hands forward yelling “Burrow.” Out popped the same type of portal that Zatanna had disappeared through. And seconds after the portal was opened, out fell the magician.

“What just happened,” Zatanna immediately asked.

“The rest of your comrades will be fine somewhere between five to ten minutes,” the butterfly girl says.

“Before we go into the full explanation, do you guys have a bathroom in this place by any chance,” the leopard girl asked.

#crossover #justice league #miraculous #miraculous ladybug #miraculous fandom #original character #original heroes #original miraculous #ml salt #lila salt #alya salt #nino salt #i love salt #crossovers are the best #part 1

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etirabys · 4 years

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Downbelow Station, a fanfic summary

I’ve been writing fic for this tiny book fandom and have at least a few fandom acquaintances who want to read my fic but don’t want to read the book. This is a summary of what happens in the novel, whose heart, to me, is the relationship between a mindwiped ex-slave and a cross-cultural married couple who take him in under their protection.

The premise

People are in space, since the Earth Company started establishing space stations around increasingly distant stars for manufacturing/trade. There are several types of people:

Stationers stay on one station – stations were originally established by the Earth Company but have since gained de facto independence because Earth is so far away

Merchanters live on ships and trade – family very important to them, so is family name, regularly deal with Stationers as part of their life but find settling down very foreign. More sexually opportunistic than Stationers, possibly less monogamous.

Earth Company Fleet soldiers live on ships; originally under the control of Earth Company, as of novel start have gone kind of rogue, will continue to go even more rogue over the course of the novel

Citizens of Union, a... nation in space that grew in the deepest reaches, furthest away from Earth's influence. Union is currently trying to annex everyone else. Earth Company is trying to resist this through their Fleet. However, Earth Company is not very enthusiastic about this war and have been drawing out; the Fleet thinks it's important to keep fighting and keep doing dipshit moves like impressing Merchanter ships and ?? maybe looting stations a little bit to keep going.

Azi of Union – a genetically engineered underclass specific to Union. Basically designer subs. I believe the word azi is never brought up in Downbelow Station, but it's very clear a character is an azi, and what that means is explained in Cyteen, which takes place in the same universe. Union citizens use 'tapes' casually and at-will for fast learning and entertainment and conditioning, but starting later in life. Azi grow up on tape – their psyches are designed to be good at whatever they were designed to do, whether that's soldiering or psychologizing or childcare. Azi require varyingly regular check-ins with a Supervisor, who is an assigned person who tells the azi they are Very Good and On Course With Their Lives and give them tapes to keep them aligned with their values and mentally stable. Azi have normal human names but also an ID that looks like AO-1234, where the first alphabet character indicates what ‘class’ you are – an Alpha-class azi is probably far smarter than your average citizen and is more capable of functioning independently. Azi can win citizenship, but so far the only people onscreen who’ve done so are Alpha-class azi.

The cast

Damon Konstantin is a head of Legal Affairs on Pell Station, and the son of the Stationmaster, which is apparently a hereditary position. Despite the hereditariness Pell seems to have the most familiar culture to me, a 21st century American expecting democracy and rule of law. Pell Station is special – it orbits a human-livable planet called Downbelow, and there are only three such planets under human control. This means the planet can be used as a base for ‘bioform production’ (a vague category encompassing everything you can grow on a planet but not a space station) and makes Pell strategically valuable. The other two livable planets are Earth, under the control of the Earth Company Fleet’s nominal masters, and Cyteen, the base of Union operations. Pell is neutral, as many star stations try to be.

Elene Quen is a Merchanter who stepped off her ship to marry Damon. They’ve been married for four months at novel start. Her formal role is liaison with Merchanters.

Joshua Talley is a soldier of Union who was captured when Union forces sabotaged (blew up) a station called Mariner Station. He was tortured for information on another station – Russell’s – whose inhabitants feared the same fate for themselves. He had nothing to give them – he was a medium-level technician/soldier, an ‘armscomper’, which I think means he was the person pressing buttons to fire on targets or programming the weapons to fire on targets. During his interrogation Russell’s station was also sabotaged, ensuing in a mass evacuation.

Signy Mallory is one of the ~10 captains of the Earth Company Fleet. She is commanding and very deadly, commands fanatical loyalty from her soldiers. She’s also a sexual sadist. When she comes to evacuate Russell’s Stationers from a failing space station she finds that they have a Union POW who is very pretty, and takes him into her personal quarters for their journey to Pell. It is not said how she rapes him but it was a lot. Joshua thinks of this part as worse than the previous interrogation.

The events from there

When the Fleet arrives at Pell Station, they are convoying huge ships full of thousands of refugees from stations sabotaged / fallen to Union. It has been weeks or months since they started out. The ships were overpacked, many inside are dead, the culture of the ships has quickly turned anarchic/violent.

Angelo Konstantin, master of Pell, says "wtf, we can't take all these people, we don't have space. We literally cannot do this." The Fleet says, “You better,” unloads the highly upset and sick refugees, and leaves. Pell Station clears out two sectors of their station and makes it the 'quarantine zone', later shortened to Q. Conditions are very bad in Q and what to do with the violent, desperate people inside, many of whom cannot prove who they were in their past lives, when Pell doesn’t have the capacity to relocate them, is an ongoing problem throughout the novel.

Before leaving, Signy Mallory also said, "in addition to the refugee crises we unloaded on you, here is a Union prisoner of war we transported separately because the refugees would have killed him", and dumps Joshua on Pell leadership.

Around this time, Elene Quen finds out that her ship was destroyed when Mariner Station blew up. She now has no blood family, and Merchanters put great cultural emphasis on having clan and name. She decides to have a kid, talking Damon into it.

Joshua Talley is extremely depressed and keeps asking for a mindwipe so he can live as a normal citizen on Pell rather than being indefinitely detained. Mindwipes are used on stations as a consensual way of rehabilitating criminals. His captors are reluctant – it’s tantamount to execution. Damon Konstantin is the final permission-giver on the issue and gives it in the end. The process of mindwipe (or Adjustment) necessarily causes the person to regurgitate their whole life. This is recorded. Due to this, he discovers only after the mindwipe is complete that Josh was tortured on Russell’s with mindwipe drugs (presumably for the same regurgitating-your-whole-life property) and then raped on Signy Mallory’s ship on the way to Pell, and that wanting to wipe out the trauma was the real reason he wanted a mindwipe.

Damon feels really bad about this. He checks up on Josh Talley a lot when he's recovering from the mindwipe. He and his wife Elene decide to 'sponsor' him when he's rejoining normal society on the ship. Elene does so through some personal resistance – Josh once belonged to the military force that wiped out her family. They check in with a guy who doesn’t remember much of anything but definitely has abandonment issues and is afraid of emotional entanglement with people.

Josh Talley quietly converts much of his internal body mass into gooey loyalty.

Plot chaos. The station comes to be formally occupied by the Fleet, who wants to use it as their new base of operations, and a Union saboteur named Gabriel who talks to Stationmaster Angelo Konstantin’s main rival and conspires to bring him to power instead...

There’s a part I really really want to summarize here where Josh tries to fall on grenade for the Quen-Konstantins – literally, trying to take an action that would end in his death but keep them safe from the Fleet – and they show up and say “you idiot, never do that again” and bring him back to their apartment and say “while the Fleet is suspicious of you, you are living HERE, so everyone knows you are under our protection. Forget your old job, we’ll find you something working closely with Damon every day – while you’re in sight they can’t get at you.” But I can’t find a non-confusing way to relay it, sorry.

Soon after that, the Union saboteur succeeds. Angelo Konstantin is assassinated. His rival, Jon Lukas, takes his place, and starts enacting subtly Union-friendly policies. I think this somehow happens concurrently with the Fleet still using Pell as a base of operations. It’s highly chaotic. Elene flees the chaos on a Merchanter ship whose family she knows. Damon and Josh, fearing whoever assassinated Angelo, hide within the more bad and chaotic parts of the station (I honestly don’t believe the author when she says they managed this for months – Pell has tens of thousands of people, that’s not a lot! You could close each sector at a time and sweep everyone!). This part feels like big missed opportunity to me – they spend their time moving from hiding place to hiding place, coming up with hopeless schemes that they know they’ll never enact. One infers they got much closer, but the author doesn’t go into that either. The one delight that comes out of this sequence is that Josh becomes more assertive and competent than we’ve ever seen him – being in hiding, under danger, brings out submerged training. He’s not a dependent anymore – arguably in some places he’s in lead.

In the middle of this, Josh makes contact with the Union saboteur, Gabriel, who hails him as a colleague and informs him that they’re of the same kind. They have the same training. The story Josh gave Russell’s interrogators, and Pell, that he was a mid-tier technician, is an implanted set of memories that automatically flushes his real ones when he was under duress.

This means, although the author never explores it, that Josh was probably integral to destroying Mariner Station, and concomitantly responsible for Elene’s family’s deaths.

Josh asks Gabriel for safe passage to the planet Downbelow for both himself and a companion. Gabriel acquiesces, but is shocked when the companion Josh brings to the meeting is the Konstantin heir. He starts to say, “Well, well, what a useful person you have brought me –” and then gets shot by a Fleet soldier who’s following reports of a suspicious person. (My fic Half-Silvered Mirror diverges from canon at this point, and asks what would have happened if Gabriel had his way.)

Now in the hands of the Fleet, Josh and Damon meet with Signy Mallory again. Josh isn’t what Mallory remembers – as a rape victim he was passive, inward-turned. This Josh is articulate and emotional and loyal. Damon isn’t what she expects, either – he manages to jab at her conscience about what the Fleet has become, lawless and unmoored from any democratic interest. She plans to execute both of them the next day.

Due to convoluted plot reasons, she doesn’t. She turns against the rest of the Fleet, which for their own reasons is headed back towards Earth – to conquer. Her ship, Norway, enters a standoff against Union warships over Pell. Which isn’t on course to go well for her, until someone broadcasts at both of them that Pell is now under Merchanter claim. Elene, while out in space, has been convincing Merchanters to form an unprecedented coordination bloc. She demands Pell for the Merchanter Alliance and informs the Union military leader, Azov, that if he doesn’t acquiesce all Merchanter ships in her fleet will refuse to trade in Union space.

She wins. The scene when she docks at Pell and walks in, pregnant and victorious, to kiss her husband, is one of the most visually !!! scenes.

In the aftermath, Azov tries to take Josh back for Union. Damon says nope, he’s ours. Josh, what do you want? Josh says nothing. Looks at nothing. But when Azov and the other Union soldiers leave, he stays.

And afterwards, he goes to Signy Mallory – whose ships now constitute Pell’s militia – and asks, sincerely, to work as crew on her ship for a while. He says he can’t live on a station comfortably. That the stationers know him, and his past. (Not sure how true this is.) Mallory says it’s nothing another mindwipe can’t cure, and he says he doesn’t want to forget. “I’ve got something. The only real thing. All that I value.”

“So you go off and leave it?”

“For a while.”

Comments

There’s... so much I want to write about and explore.

Did Elene know when Josh left that he was probably responsible for her family’s death? (My fic Awarding Damages is about one way they could resolve this)

What did Signy Mallory do to Josh? Can he handle working under her?

Damon and Elene are so parental to Josh, and they're also embarking on having a family in a dynastic way where having a clan is their way of asserting that they exist and are rooted in the world. And of course Josh is going to feel really weird about how he fits into that – he's only watching it happen because he's a charity case, of course he's going to have no involvement in that project – what place is left for him anyway, he has no one and is nothing. I want this man to have feelings about family and how he doesn't have one and then HAVE A FAMILY I want him to hold the baby and go "OH. You are a biological composite of the two greatest people in the world. I cannot hold it against you that you are now going to push me out of my current living situation with the two greatest people in the world"

Due to the amount of mindfuckery Josh has gone through, it’s unclear to both him and the reader how many his memories are real. What does that do to a person?

From what I know of azi from Cyteen, Josh has psychological needs – again, he’s like a bred sub – that non-Unioners aren’t going to understand. Can he get them met? How does he negotiate that?

#rambl #downbelow station #cj cherryh #small book fandom pitch

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galaxy-parchment · 4 years

Text

Jon is outed as Steampunk

Hello my beautiful patient followers. I’ve returned with TMA content because it’s my latest obsession. I’m proud to say that my first contribution to the fandom is an obligatory Mechs!Jon fic because I find them hilarious.

Tim was doing his best to avoid having to go up to the boss’s office all day, but was very disappointed to find he had no choice but to pop in for a visit to give him some of the ‘possibly true’ statements.

It wasn’t like he was going to believe it anyway - what was even the point? The guy was so uptight Tim didn’t think he knew how to have some fun and imagine the possibility that maybe there was something exciting in the universe. Tim supposed that didn’t really change the fact that he needed to give the guy his precious statements, so he groaned and grabbed the pile he’d gathered up.

He approached the door and stopped short of it, wondering if he would even notice if he didn’t give him the statements. He really didn’t have the energy for whatever job he was going to be given if he dared to walk in. Then something caught his ear.

Was Jon… chanting?

He was talking slightly quieter than his speaking volume and that definitely wasn’t English. It couldn’t be him speaking to himself. Jon had specifically told him the other day he didn’t speak any other languages. He tried picking out his words in case he was just mishearing, but the words were very clear and were certainly not anything coherent. He did catch him occasionally switch to humming. Was Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute singing to himself?

Tim made a mental note of the more coherent words and stepped into the doorway.

“Hey, boss!” he couldn’t help but be amused at how Jon jumped at the sound of him. He ripped his hand away from his face, which was pressed up against it, and readjusted his glasses with the hand.

“What did you need, Tim?” he asked, looking up at him unenthusiastically.

“Got a fresh delivery of statements for you!” he said cheerily, stepping up to the desk and placing the pile on an empty part of the table with a satisfying slap.

“Later than usual I see. Doesn’t matter I suppose. Would you mind filing away all of these on your way out?” Jon said, gesturing to a pile of statement files that was even larger than the one he’d just brought in. Great.

“Sure thing, boss! Wouldn’t want you having any of the fun, eh?” He joked, which didn’t seem to carry the same amusement for the other man.

“Shut up, Tim,” he deadpanned, returning to his work, signalling that the exchange was over.

Tim wandered back to his desk faster than usual and frantically wrote down all of the phrases he could remember.

What were they…. He definitely said something that sounded like ‘yai’ and he thought he heard a ‘sothoth’. How was he supposed to find anything with this gibberish? With little hope he opened up his web browser,typing in the words, and was surprised to find it wasn’t gibberish at all. It was some Lovecraftian chant. He doubted Jonathan ‘this-statement-is-wrong-because-this-word-is-mispelled’ Sims would be the sort of guy to worship Cthulhu.

He’d been humming though, hadn’t he? Maybe it was a song. With his impeccable research skills he added ‘song’ to the end of his search and right there on the first page of results was a song called ‘Red Signal’ by the Mechanisms. He clicked on a video and listened to the song. That was definitely the same tune. It was strange, though. He never really pegged the bossman as someone that listened to this sort of thing. It reminded him of a folksy sort of punk or metal? Then the chanting stopped and switched to a spoken verse and Tim froze.

Was that Jon? It definitely sounded like him… Maybe the voice was a bit deeper and gravelly but Tim could have sworn that it was his voice. He frantically searched up the band. After looking through some photoshoots for some old albums he couldn’t help but stare. That was definitely his boss with quite a bit of makeup and dressed in some very over-the-top steampunk getup and flipping off the camera. He suddenly felt someone pressing up against his chair from behind.

“Is that Jon?” Sasha asked, leaning over his shoulder, squinting at the screen with her head cocked.

“Apparently,” Tim said, grinning ear to ear. “Look, I did some digging and it turns out he used to be in this steampunk band,” he continued, showing Sasha more pictures of Jon and his bandmates on the page.

“That’s amazing. He looks quite good in the pictures though, don’t you think?” she said with a chuckle.

“Right? He actually looks like he’d be fun to have a drink with!” He switched back to ‘Red Signal’ and started playing it. “I mean listen to this, he’s actually good, too!”

“How did you even find this?”

“He was singing it to himself and I used my incredibly advanced skills to track it down,” Tim bragged, making a show of readjusting his lapels.

“If only you put the same effort into actually working,” she chided, giving him a cheerful nudge with her elbow.

“Alas, I don’t think there’d be any work left for the rest of you if I did. It’s a public service to you all.” He grinned.

“Riiiight, because this place could run without me around.” Sasha grinned back.

The door to the shared office opened with a sharp creak and Martin stepped into the room.

They looked up and Tim called, “Hey Martin! How was Bexley?”

“Quite nice, actually! No creepy witches sending body parts to people, but there were some very kind old ladies I had the pleasure of speaking to!”

“Sounds like it was fun!” Sasha replied with a warm smile.

Martin was placing his bag down at his desk when he stopped and looked back at the two of them.

“What song is that?” he asked.

Tim grinned mischievously. “It’s called ‘Red Signal’, it’s by-“

“-by the Mechanisms? I had a friend that loved them, played it all of the time,” Martin finished, chuckling to himself at the memory. “I quite like their music, actually.”

Sasha and Tim took a moment to stare at each other knowingly and beamed innocently at Martin as he turned back to them.

Sasha looked at him with the same warm smile she’d given him before. “Maybe you could ask Jon if he’s heard of them while you give him your report?”

“Are you sure? It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing he’d go for,” he wondered.

“People can surprise you all of the time, may as well ask anyway. It’s not like he’s gonna hate your guts any more than he already does.”

Martin made a disappointed wince. “I guess so.”

“Don’t let that grump get you down, Martin, he probably just has a huge crush on you,” Sasha smirked.

“What? N-no! As if, that doesn’t even make any sense!” he stammered, turning back to his desk and sitting down to hide the red that was spreading over his face.

“Ask him, though, will you? I’ve already had to go up there today and he’s given me a whole stack of files to go through. Not sure I could take another trip,” Tim joked as Sasha moved back to her desk. “Don’t tell him it was me that was wondering, though, he’d probably think it’s a trick or something,” he added casually.

“R-right, sure thing, Tim,” Martin obliged.

—

Martin knocked on Jon’s half-open door later that day, report in hand. Jon spared him a brief glance upwards before looking back down at his work.

“Did you find anything regarding the Bexley statement?” he asked, not bothering to hide his disinterest as Martin placed his report on the table.

“I didn’t find the woman described in the statement, but I made sure to check every elderly Angela,” he said, a bit disappointed at how useless the trip was. “I did have some wonderful conversations about jigsaw puzzles with a few of them, though!” he added cheerfully. Thankfully Jon didn’t seem to be in a mood to scold him, but wasn’t at all invested in the conversation. Martin was about to leave when he remembered Tim’s request.

“Oh, uh, by the way, we were- well we were talking about it earlier so I was wondering if you’d heard of the Mechanisms? Like that space pirate band that used to play in a lot of London bars?”

Jon froze up for a moment before quickly explaining, “Erm, no I don’t think I have. Not uh…. not a big fan of going to see bands play at shows, you know?”

Martin raised an eyebrow. “Oh, okay? I guess it doesn’t seem like something you’d like… are you okay? You seem… off?”

“I’m quite fine, Martin, just a bit of a headache, I suppose. If you’ll excuse me I need to get back to this,” he said dismissively, returning to whatever he was writing down and setting Martin’s report on a stack.

“Sure! Did you need any tea? I’ve got one that’s really good for headaches,” he offered.

“That won’t be necessary, Martin, get back to work.”

“Right.” Martin concluded as he left the room.

—

Things had been going a bit too slowly for Martin’s liking in the past few days. That usually meant Jon got antsy about people not doing as much work. It wasn’t like there was anything to do in the first place.

He was at least in the break room with Tim having lunch, who was playing more Mechanisms music, so Jon couldn’t tell either of them off right now. As his mind drifted to Jon, the man himself entered the room with his own lunch and made his way to the coffee machine.

The song Tim was playing was pretty good. Martin curiously looked at Tim’s phone on the table playing the music.

“What song is that, Tim?”

“Ah, it’s called ‘Loki’, it’s from this great album called ‘The Bifrost Incident’,” he said with an obnoxious grin. Jon looked at them and ducked his head when Martin looked back.

Martin pulled out his own phone and searched up ‘The Bifrost Incident’ and found a video from a show that he opened up. After a bit of pre-show banter the first song started.

That was when Martin heard Johnny DeVille do the song’s introduction. He’d always thought the lead singer sounded familiar, but the paragraph gave Martin a very vivid recollection of the exact tone of voice Jon always used when he recorded statements.

That couldn’t be right, no way was that him. He took a good look at Johnny and looked between his own phone at the man with black cracks drawn on his face wearing the most steampunk outfit he’d ever seen and Jon, who was standing there, in his sweater vest, making a cup of coffee to go with his sandwich. Tim was looking at both of them struggling not to laugh and Jon was suddenly VERY interested in the coffee he had just poured out.

“JOHNNY DEVILLE?” Martin exclaimed, prompting Tim to bend over, choking on his own stifled laughter.

Jon picked up his coffee and claimed his sandwich from the table behind him and refused to meet Martin’s gaze.

“Thats- uh- probably just a coincidence… I’m, uh, I’ll just have lunch in my office today,” he mumbled out, clearly not convinced he’d covered it up at all and left the room without another word.

Tim pulled himself back up and let out a heavy breath. “Oh, ha, Martin, sorry, it’s just Sasha and I were wondering how long it was gonna take,” he sighed gleefully. “Hopefully he’ll face society again. Hard to imagine the bossman was ever that cool, huh?”

Martin stared at the door. “Yeah…”

—

The next day Jon came into the office, but hadn’t shown his face for the whole day. Martin felt bad about yesterday, he probably overreacted a bit. Tim assured him it was fine and that the boss just isn’t the type to take a bit of embarrassment on the chin. This didn’t stop Martin from dropping in with a cup of tea when it became clear Jon wasn’t leaving his office for lunch.

Martin knocked on the door and upon getting a gruff ‘yes?’ from the other side he let himself in. Jon was more dismissive than usual and didn’t even spare a glance at him. Martin wasn’t sure how much of it was his usual grumpiness and how much was because of yesterday.

He set the tea down in the spot Jon usually kept it, right next to his coffee mug from yesterday. Martin waited for any acknowledgement. The acknowledgement never came and Jon’s expression was unreadable. The fact that he was looking down intently didn’t help.

“You know, I think it’s pretty cool that you were in a band. It’s not like you’re a murderer or something actually bad,” Martin said, desperate to break the silence. Jon clenched his pen tighter and looked up at him cautiously.

“That’s… kind of you to say…” he responded.

“Don’t worry about it, we’ve all done some pretty silly things. I will be honest, though, Jon, if being the lead singer for the Mechanisms is the most embarrassing thing you’ve done, I am extremely jealous.”

Jon smiled in a way that looked almost bashful on him. “It was a lot of fun, performing. It was a real shame when we all split after university.”

“I can imagine,” Martin sighed, silently cursing himself at how softly he’d said it. “Steampunk outfits really suit you, though, Jon. The makeup was a nice touch too.” He turned and made his way back to the door.

As Martin went to close the door behind him Jon grumbled, “Shut up, Martin.”

—

The next morning Martin found something on his desk. It was a Mechanisms shirt neatly folded up and a copy of the Bifrost Incident album, both signed by all of the band members.

The note lying on top of them read ‘I had a few extras at home - J’ and Martin couldn’t help but feel giddy.

#galaxywrites #the magnus archives #tma #fanfiction #the magnus pod #jonathan sims #the archivist #tim stoker #sasha james #the mechanisms #mechs!jon #martin blackwood

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theskywaslookingback · 4 years

Note

jongerrymartintimsasha au you say?

Okay I’m home now and not entirely braindead yet so here we go:

For starters you need to understand how my brain works. With many AUs I just recycle the same headcanons over and over so it just becomes a mashup of whatever things vibe for me the most. So imagine in one hand I have my visible world au (the jgm one) and in the other hand I have the jgt au and then I clap my hands together and BAM! New AU!

So this would be - timeline wise - after Jon, Gerry, and Tim had left university. Jon has a job teaching at said university, Gerry’s degree is in library science and he hasn’t found a position yet so he’s currently working full time at the bar he’d been working in during uni, and Tim is working in a publishing office really close to Jon’s work. So every morning Jon and Tim stop by at this little cafe near Tim’s job to get coffee before work because Tim actually likes coffee and Jon is NOT a morning person and relies on the caffeine. Here we introduce Martin and Sasha who are both baristas that usually end up working the morning shift.

Now, my roommate was a barista and I happen to know every coffee shop AU in the world is a fucking LIE. These places are busy as shit and they don’t have time to stop and gossip with every customer that comes in, okay. And they will hate your guts for trying to flirt when they’re BUSY. BUT one thing that is true is that if you’re either a) really nice or b) an asshole then baristas are sure to remember you. And Jon and Tim just happen to be one really nice guy and one asshole! So Martin and Sasha remember them and sometimes have their regular orders ready to go before they even come in.

Anyway Martin gets this huge crush on Jon just as like a “hey he’s really cute even if he’s kind of rude” kind of thing and Sasha teases him RELENTLESSLY about it even though SHE has a crush on TIM.

But whatever they’re not gonna, like, do anything about it because that would be weird? Right Sasha? I’m mean, they’re probably dating I’m pretty sure I heard Tim call Jon “love” the other day so probably and- (take a breath, Martin)

Meanwhile! Gerry comes by sometimes in the afternoon because Tim says they have the best pastries and Jon is always going on about how good the tea Martin makes is on the occasions where Jon gets tea on his way home and Martin is working. And he has some hours to waste so he brings his laptop and just kind of chills there and he’s intrigued when he hears one of them mention one of his partners. And then he finds out that Martin thinks Jon has nice hands (he does) and Sasha thinks Tim has a pretty mouth (he absolutely does) and Gerry “actual fucking menace and resident shit stirrer” Keay is like “oh I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but I actually live with them and would you maybe want to come over for game night sometime? A couple of our friends haven’t been able to make it recently and Jon’s been meaning to start a new D&D campaign I mean, only if it’s not weird.”

And Sasha is super into it! Yes! Let’s go Martin itll be fun!

And Martin is like absolutely not Sash he could be a serial killer.

So Sasha does the only “sensible” thing here and takes Gerry’s number, and when Jon stops by on his way from work she asks him about it.

Of course Jon fucking blue screens for a minute because he’s like “literally what is Gerry up to” but he hesitantly is like yes that’s all true and actually yeah it’d be lovely if you came.

So they become friends. And they keep hanging out. Tim and Sasha first because their schedules end up aligning best out of everyone’s, but then Jon and Martin too. Martin and Sasha like to do things with Jon that Tim and Gerry don’t usually like long trips to museums or art shows. Sasha becomes Jon’s theater buddy because APPARENTLY Martin doesn’t like theater either, the traitor.

And at some point they talk about it and Jon is like “oh no I really really like Martin” and Tim is like “yeah I really really like Sasha” and so they end up upgrading to five. Explaining the way it works to other people would end up with like a chart and a power point slide (which Jon DOES have prepared, thank you) but it works for them and that’s all that matters.

Basically they all end up living in a house together with two dogs and a cat and they all love each other in different ways and it’s beautiful and messy and makes me want to cry.

#long post #statement ends #jongerrymartintimsasha #anonymous

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orangeflavoryawp · 3 years

Text

First Line Game

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favorite authors!

Okay this sounds pretty fun, but I want to include other fandoms, so I’m not doing my last 20 exactly, since those are all Jonsa. Reaching back just a bit here. Also excluding drabble series.

Tagged by @swaps55. Thanks so much! Loving this! Tagging @foofyschmoofer, @thedandiestoflions, @theoriginalsuki, @barbex, @missfaber, @amymel86, @riptidemonzarc, @joufancyhuh, @szajnie, @fedonciadale, @ladyalice101, @goddesstiera and anyone else who thinks this is fun.

From Instep to Heel: Sansa Stark is brought to the capital by her father and brothers, a train of Stark banners flying behind them, and it's the first glimpse of the North Jon has ever truly seen.

Red Curtain: "No, no, but you see, gravity doesn't matter here," Theon argues. "You're up in space. It's like a fucking swimming pool up there, just, you know, minus having your trunks hauled halfway down your ass every time you surface."

Soiled: "How did you know?"

His question stills her hand at his temple, the words gruff and choked off, voice cracking from disuse.

A Violence Done Most Kindly: It would be a lie to say that Sansa understands Cersei now – here at the end.

Bruises: They reach for each other like practiced pain – like pressing on a bruise.

An affirmation of survival.

Hallowed: "Even a simpleton could see the way he looks at you."

The smooth, dry voice of Baelish stops Jon just before he rounds the bend to the corridor hosting Sansa's chambers. His spine locks, jaw clenching with unease.

What Grows in Winter: He weds her in winter, as Starks have done for generations. And he is now – he well and truly is – a Stark.

Ghosts in Our Bed: Castle Black is bleak and cold-stoned and strangely hollow. This is not the North she remembers.

Wool and Tallow: Sansa finds that sewing flesh is not so very different from sewing cloth, perhaps, except, for the shrieks and groans that accompany her new needlework.

Rocks and Shoals: "I've got an important assignment for you, Krios." Commander Bailey leaned back in the chair of his office, one hand tapping out a rhythm on his desk.

Smokescreen: "I'm telling you, they're together together," Ino urges from her spot beside him along the bridge, her legs dangling over the ledge, her arms wrapped around the guardrail as she leans forward, watching Kurenai and Asuma walking down the far street.

Love Goes (Like This): It isn't love at first sight.

Instead, it goes like this:

Her white kimono is pristine, the length of her sleeves just right, the arch of her collar a graceful, delicate thing. She is all this, and yet, he does not have eyes for her.

But this she expects.

Cenozoic: "How many more do you have?" Kakashi asks, peeking across the table at her.

Kurenai rifles through her reports for a moment, then looks up at him. "Only two more." She grabs another takoyaki from the plate between them and pops the doughy ball into her mouth.

The Scent of Snow: Hinata doesn't close her windows in winter.

"You can smell the snow, you know," she says, fingers curling around her tea cup, nose red and runny. She sniffles, staring down into her cup. She swirls the tea slowly, grazing the cup's edge with every rock of her wrists, but never really going over.

"You can't smell snow, Hinata." He frowns at her across the table.

Carrion: Ino comes home quietly, unobtrusively, and with the smell of blood that is not her own faintly trailing her.

Silent, (Blaring): From root to sprout to stalk to trunk to branch to leaf to sky. There is an order to these sorts of things.

"Plant each seed with meaning," her mother had told her once, calloused hands covering her own tiny, inexperienced ones.

Rust: Through the filter of her visor's read-out, the clinic is dimly lit and red-hazed. Static to the eye, but Shepard has only one focus.

Mordin Solus says many things and nothing all at once. His hands are anything but stagnant, his eyes blinking rapidly as he paces through his single-minded monologue. He passes under a cone of light, his skin like rust, pock-marked, leather-lined.

Ghost Forest: "They call it a ghost forest," she says, standing with her back to the trees, just at the edge of the brush, her gaze raking over the coast before her.

Elegy at Draxis Major: In the end, the Cosmic Imperative has proven its truth. It was apparent in his cycle, and it is apparent in this one, as well. The universe rewards strength. And the weak are rightfully shunned.

Stain: She doesn't have time to wash her hands.

As soon as the Council is safe and the Cerberus assassin deemed lost, Shepard sprints for the hospital. Still in her armor. Still with a chamber-hot pistol. Still with bloody palms.

Thane is dying.

And she doesn't have time to wash her hands.

* * *

I feel like there’s definitely a pattern to my openers but I can’t accurately define it. I know I tend to rest on dialogue for my opening lines a lot. That much I’m aware of, at least. I don’t know. I think maybe my pattern is that I often bring the theme up in the first immediate lines of a story, either figuratively or literally. What do you guys think?

This was actually pretty fun. Love doing these kinds of writing memes. :D

#writing #fanfiction #writing meme #writing game #my stories #my writing

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targaryen-stronghold · 5 years

Note

What’s worse about this shit show finale as a female fan is that I feel tricked because I used to think I was watching the rise of women to power on a patriarchal society when in truth this has been an incel fantasy all along. All those feminists’ critics of the show deserve an apology, they were right.

I heard you, anon. Many female fans feel this way and we are absolutely right and justified. I used to think so as well, but guess we were wrong, it was never about women navigating power, it was about demonizing women in power. Actually, the only women who remained in power (Sansa and Yara) in the end were allowed to so do because (1) there was no one else (2) a man let them. So whenever people say Game of Thrones is a “feminist show”, I have to laugh because no, it isn’t. At all. And Season 8 proved that.

Dan Weiss had the nerve to say about the critics on Season 8:

It’s not really up for us to decide what people feel about it. Hope people watch and like it in the future. There’s no way to tell how things are going to be perceived in 10, 20, even five years. These things change so fast. The landscape of television changes so quickly, it’s changing as we’re standing here right now. It’s so gratifying to have reached this many people. I hope people a little too young to watch now will grow up to learn about it and watch it as well.

Is this guy fucking serious? Does he really think this show will age well? In a time where television and cinema are getting more progressive and representative of women, POC, LGBTI+, etc., he actually believes a show about white men in power and the demonization of pretty much every character that isn’t white or male will sit well with audiences?

1. Reinforcement of Sexist Tropes

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek from the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Arts did an whole essay on why Daenerys and the mad queen narrative is a strictly male fantasy. He’s one of the most important cultural critics of the century and an academic with years of research on Philosophy and Sociology so he knows what he’s talking about.

Dangerous Characters has also written a very interesting essay about why Dany’s ending is such a toxic and dangerous narrative:

Because in that moment, when Daenerys goes nuts, and becomes a wicked genocidal dictator who must be deposed, I am remembering her rape scene. Basic story logic: That was the beginning of her arc, this is the end, and we are being asked to see what has changed. It was a journey from powerlessness to power, but now we know this makes it a journey from good to evil, too. What you are telling me, when you make Daenerys a power-mad despot, is that it was better for her to be powerless. It was better for her to be on her knees, with a stranger’s dick forced inside her, than it was for her to be a queen. Power turns Dany bad, and her badness hurts everyone, so it was better for the whole world for that little girl to get raped, over and over and over, than it was for her to find her power.

Message: Women can’t be trusted with power

I also did a post about why “mad queen Dany” perpetuates sexist tropes and draw parallels with real-life women. But Dany isn’t the only female character who suffers with sexist tropes, it applies to pretty much every other female character in the series.

We also got:

Rape of women used as a plot device to make them “stronger” in both Daenerys and Sansa’s characters: as if it wasn’t bad enough that some people in this fandom refuse to acknowledge that Khal Drogo repeatedly raped Dany, Alex Graves referred to Ramsay as Sansa’s “love interest” when he was telling Sophie about her Season 5 arc, and Bryan Cogman called Sansa’s forced marriage and rape as “a hardened woman making a choice”;

Fetishization of lesbians, bisexuals and women of color;

Perpetuation of violence against sex workers;

Internalized misogyny and constantly pinning women against each other: Arya “most girls are idiots” Stark, Cersei “I should have been born a man” Lannister and Sansa “men are easily manipulated (by women)” Stark;

Perpetuation of toxic notions of womanhood such as upholding motherhood as women’s ultimate endeavor: villainous Cersei is redeemed because she’s pregnant and loves her children and is presented as a victim of the now-villainous infertile Daenerys;

Justifying and romanticizing domestic violence with Robert Baratheon slapping Cersei (actually erasing all the abuse Cersei suffered at Robert’s hands) and both Tyrion and Jon murdering Shae and Dany;

Vilifying of every women in power, except for Sansa (but even she was only allowed to take power over the North because King Bran let her);

And so on.

Yikes. My girl Sansa deserved better.

2. Validation of Racism and Xenophobia

The true heroes of the story - the Starks - live in an openly racist and xenophobic space and its habitants give the side-eye to (and literally run away from) the only black characters on the cast, providing us with gems like this:

And then Arya kind of forgot she befriended foreigner people in previous seasons.

Daenerys is not one of them because she’s neither a Stark nor a Northerner: she’s foreign, an immigrant, who doesn’t know the westerosi ways (something her haters like to bring up to justify why she doesn’t deserve to be queen of the seven kingdoms). Not only that but she mostly associates herself with black and brown people: her best friend, her advisors, her captains and soldiers.

In the end, all this behavior is justified and validated because Dany has been the true villain all along and her armies have committed terrible crimes against the innocent white people of Westeros, especially in the capital. Meaning: the North was right in their prejudice against Dany and her armies. In the end, the Unsullied and the Dothraki return to Essos because there is no place for them in Westeros.

Message: POC immigrants are a threat to white people

I would say Game of Thrones dig it’s own grave.

#anti game of thrones #anti game of thrones season 8 #daenerys targaryen #anti dan weiss #anti d&d #ask

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imalwaysintune · 4 years

Text

A Birthday Miracle

“Hey do we remember 161? No direct spoilers but this story follows Tim and Sasha after they throw their little party for Jon.

Enjoy! Hit up my ask box too!

Story under cut!

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“Well, Jon, I hope you enjoyed this little rendezvous I put together. I know you like to pretend you’re a sinister old man, but I can see in your eyes you really enjoyed it,” Tim joked, with a huge smile stretching across his face.

He saw Jon’s eyes scanning the room, making sure that everyone else had left and it was just the two of them. “Yes, Tim, you’re right. It was a very nice gesture,” Jon said timidly, the ghost of a smile passing over his face. “I just can’t believe you, Martin, and Sasha would go through all this for me.”

“Aw, come on Jon. You gotta give yourself some credit. You’re pretty cool when you’re not acting like a grumpy old guy,” At this Jon actually laughed, albeit a little breathy from it’s lack of use. Tim walked over to Jon’s desk where he sat and ruffled his hair, making it go everywhere.

Jon sighed and brushed the hair way from his face. He looked like he was thinking about something before he came to a conclusion. He stood up slowly and threw his arms around Tim, patting him on the back gently. Tim didn’t have time to react to the hug before Jon was already sitting back at his desk, his head buried in the piles of paperwork on his desk.

Tim decided to leave it for now, and slipped quietly into the hallway. He about jumped out of his pants, however, when he was greeted with an unknown figure in the hallway.

“Sasha! Jesus, you nearly made me shit my pants,” Tim breathed, leaning against the wall for support much like a dame.

“It’s not my fault you don’t look where you’re going,” Sasha chastised. “Look, I’m almost finished up in storage. Do you want to go grab a drink after work?”

“Hold on, are you asking me out on a date, Sasha James?” Tim was practically beaming, and couldn’t resist throwing in a bit of flirty banter.

Sasha walked down the hallway away from Tim without saying anything, just cocking an eyebrow before turning to face away from him. Though, he could’ve sworn he heard her say, “Something like that,” before disappearing around the corner.

While Tim was driving towards the bar he was to meet Sasha at, he couldn’t shake the grin that had ingrained itself into his face. He was jamming out on the radio, smiling at other passersby, earning him many looks of bewilderment. It didn’t kill his mood though, and as he parked in the parking lot of the bar, he tried to school his face so he didn’t look like a maniac.

When he stepped inside the establishment, his eyes immediately connected to Sasha’s. Instead of booking it over to her, he remained cool and tried to channel that into his walk. It made him look like a chicken, and Sasha could barely contain her laughter by the time Tim made his way over to her.

“What in the bloody hell are you doing? You look like an idiot,” Sasha said in between laughter, momentarily snapping Tim out of his façade. He sits down at the bar next to Sasha and places his face in his hands.

“Making a fool of myself, apparently,” Tim says through his hands, muffling the sound to the point where Sasha could barely understand him.

“Oh Tim, you don’t need to do anything special to do that,” Sasha said, taking one of Tim’s hands from his face and lacing her fingers between his. It was the most intimate thing Tim had ever felt, and he had half a sense to not fall over in his chair.

He did keep some kind of composure though, as he held Sasha’s hand at the bar. He used his thumb to stroke her knuckles, internally screaming at the physical contact.

Their conversation was light, not talking about serious things they had to deal with at work. It was nice, and they laughed and drank until they felt like they needed to go somewhere else.

Both Tim and Sasha stumbled out of the bar tipsy, arms interlocked so they could lean on each other for support. They piled into Tim’s car and turned up the music, going nowhere fast.

They ran out of gas just as the pair pulled up to Sasha’s house, where Tim was meant to be dropping her off. The car sputtered to a stop in front of her house, and Tim had half the urge to laugh, it was almost as if the universe was setting them up perfectly.

“Shit, Tim, why didn’t you pay attention to the gas gauge?” Sasha asked, her voice light and airy from the alcohol in her system.

“I was too busy looking into your eyes,” Tim flirted, resting his elbow on the console and putting his chin on his hand.

“And not the road? Damn, Tim you really need to step up your game,” Sasha joked as she mirrored Tim, their faces mere inches from each other. It took every ounce of Tim’s willpower to not close the gap and connect their lips, but he was willing to wait for her.

He could wait his entire life if it meant that he could kiss her once.

Maybe that was the alcohol talking, but Tim was suddenly overcome with an intense emotion. He leaned back in his seat and spoke softly, “I’ll find some way to get home. Thank you for giving me an amazing night, Sasha, really. I’m glad I got to spend Jon’s birthday having fun even if he didn’t want it to be with him.”

“Oh, come on Tim. You can just stay at my place. I have a guest bedroom and all the coffee you could want in the morning,” Sasha said, more sober than she probably intended.

“Ah, so it took you this long to try and get in my pants Sasha? Well, your evil little devil plan won’t work on me, cause I have standards,” Tim said the last word dripping with sarcasm, but he could see the flash of hurt that passed behind her eyes.

“Oh my god, wait, Sasha I was totally kidding, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. You’re totally up to my standards. If anything, you’re way above my standards and I am so lucky to have someone like you like some like me-” Tim was abruptly cut off by Sasha placing a single finger over his lips.

“I know, Tim. It’s just sometimes you need to learn to shut your mouth,” Was all she said, before getting out of the car with a wink.

Tim quickly unbuckled his seat belt and quickly grabbed the keys before getting out of the car and following Sasha, spouting apologies. Sasha just ignored him, walking up to her house, heading inside and expecting him to follow.

He was like a puppy on her heels, and when they finally got inside, he threw his arms around her shoulders.

“Sashaaaaaaaaa, I’m sorry. What can I do to get you to forgive me?” Tim pleaded, “I’ll do anything?”

“Anything?” Sasha’s eyebrow cocked up in a way that went straight to Tim’s soul, not that he’d ever admit it. He gulped as Sasha disconnected his arms from around her soldiers and turned around.

“I want you to prove to me that you love me,” Sasha said coolly, putting her hands behind her back.

“I... w-what?” Tim was short circuiting, Sasha’s words running circles through his head in a way that made him feel like he was going to pass out.

“You heard what I said. We’ve been flirting back and forth for the past few years Tim. I want to finally give you a chance to give me a straight answer. Do you love me?” Sasha’s voice was calm, much calmer than how Tim felt.

He had prepared for this moment so much. He had run through every kind of scenario where he was finally ready to confess his feelings to Sasha. But now that it was actually here, he had stage fright. He thought he would be ready, he even had a whole speech written that was buried in a journal under his mattress. What he would give to have that speech with him right now.

Suddenly something clicked in his brain, and his body took over. He hooked his right arm around the left side of her waist and pulled her into him. He took a deep breath and looked into her eyes, which were looking expectantly up at him.

He relied on his instincts finally and connected their lips, wrapping his arm tighter around her waist, sliding his other hand along her jaw to cup her face.

It felt amazing. Her lips were so soft, and the way her body fit into his made him go crazy. Sasha groaned softly and gripped Tim’s shoulders, squeezing tightly. She smiled against his lips before moving back.

“There. Was that so hard?” She said, trailing a single finger down his jawline.

The rest of that night felt like a blur to Tim. Sasha showed him to the guest bedroom, sending him off to bed with a chaste kiss on the lips. It made his heart soar, and it took him hours to calm his mind and heart down enough to actually fall asleep.

When he awoke the next morning, the smell of bacon and coffee immediately hit his nose. His mouth was watering as he hopped out of bed and opened the door into the hallway. The smell of a home cooked breakfast was even stronger out here, and he followed the fumes all the way to the kitchen.

“Aw, Tim, you look like a little lost dog. When was the last time you ate?” Sasha asked, flipping pancakes on a griddle she had on the counter.

“Hmm, I guess the cake yesterday at Jon’s party. No wonder I was so drunk with only a few drinks,” Tim walked over to the coffee maker, grabbed a mug, and filled it to the brim. “Yum, my life force.”

Sasha rolled her eyes at this and smiled, finishing up breakfast and serving the both of them.

“Do you think Jon is going to be any less grumpy today?” Sasha joked over her breakfast and coffee, just trying to make light conversation.

“It’s Jon, that question basically answers itself,” Tim joked back, finishing up his breakfast and helping wash dishes.

At one point, Sasha had turned the spray nozzle towards him and drenched him with sink water, much to his dismay. Soon enough though, the time came when they both had to leave for work or risk using late. Almost like a miracle, Sasha had a spare gas canister in her garage that allowed them to get to a gas station.

Sasha couldn’t stop rubbing the fact that she’s saved him multiple times already in his face. But even as he was rubbing it in his face, all he could do was smile.

Arriving at work, the pair realized how weird it might look if they showed up at the same time together. They agreed that Sasha will go in first, then Tim five minutes later.

In the end, it didn’t matter though because everyone was too busy actually doing their jobs, much to Tim and Sasha’s surprise. Trying to shed their look of shame, they headed further into the Institute towards the Archives.

When they reached the door, the pair entered without knocking, much to Jon’s surprise. He looked like he had been deep in thought, reorganizing files that were scattered all around the Archives. He looked annoyed, yet almost grateful for the human interaction.

“How ya feeling, Jon? Feelings pretty old yet?” Tim teased, going over to ruffle Jon’s hair yet again. It was soft, surprisingly, and he found he liked touching it.

“Tim, we’re literally almost the exact same age. My hair is already going gray because I have to deal with all of you interrupting my work all the time,” Jon said annoyed, yet Tim could hear the edge of love that was in there.

They all loved each other, in their own way, even if they were all too proud to admit it. They really only had each other in this place, as all the other staff were so far removed or borderline evil that they had no reason to form actual relationships with them.

So yeah, they loved each other. Mostly.

As if on cue to bring the whole squad together, Martin opened the door gently and froze when he saw the scene in front of him.

Jon, sat at his desk, hair all messy from Tim. That same Tim sitting on the edge of Jon’s desk, turned towards Jon and laughing at the comment he just made. And Sasha, staring at the two boys with a goofy smile on her face, as if there was nowhere else she’d rather be.

“Oh, sorry, um, was I interrupting you guys? I can come back later...” Martin said, and started to close the door to the office before he heard Tim’s voice beckoning him back into the room.

“Come on in Martin, we were just making fun of how old Jon looks,” He said, picking up a strand of Jon’s gray hair off his head.

“That is not what we were doing at all. You guys were interrupting me, and I was working,” Jon said grumpily, yet he couldn’t hide the smile that was making its way onto his face.

These are the days that really made Tim happy. It was these kinds of days that were able to chase away the nightmares and the dark thoughts that clouded his mind. But he didn’t want to think about them right now, so he chose to throw his arm around Martin and joke with his friends until Jon kicked them out.

The rest of the day went smoothly, and Tim’s mood was carried by banter with Sasha. Not only that, but Martin and Jon were also in high spirits. Everything felt right for the first time in awhile.

When the work day was finally over, Tim headed towards Artifact Storage to ask Sasha if she wanted to retrieve her car, but was interrupted when he was pulled into one of the hall closets by a dark figure.

The figure had thrown an arm around Tim’s neck and a hand clamped over his mouth. He was about to scream when the figure leaned next to his ear and spoke, “So Tim, you thought you could start an office romance and fail to tell me about it?”

Tim all but rolled his eyes at the voice that spoke. Elias. He shoved off the older man and looked at him with disgust. “Really Elias? You’ve resorted to kidnapping now? What I do outside of work doesn’t concern you, so I’d appreciate you staying out of my business. This is low, even for you.”

“Oh please, I only care about it when you are distracting my Archivist from doing his work. I don’t care about what you and Sasha do outside of the Archives, as long as it doesn’t interrupt anything going on inside. Am I clear?” Elias purred, getting uncomfortably close to Tim.

Tim made a split second decision, and shoved Elias hard. He stumbled back and, for the first time, he looked taken aback. Anger flashed in his eyes, and Tim decided he didn’t want to deal with the consequences he had just brought upon himself. He shoved open the door to the closet and stepped out into the hallway, closing it behind him and booking it to Storage.

He was met Sasha exiting Storage, and the two collided, knocking Sasha over. Tim reached out his hand instinctively and caught her, but the force of her falling sent Tim toppling after her. They landed hard, with Tim on top of Sasha, though he landed on his elbows to avoid crashing his entire weight into her. It hurt like hell.

Sasha stared up at him expectantly, and Tim was confused until he realized that he was still on top of her. He quickly scrambled into a sitting position beside her and hit his tailbone on the smooth concrete floor. Ouch again.

Sasha stood on her own, brushed off the dust that had accumulated on her from being around old pieces all day, and held out a hand to help Tim up. He took it, bashfully, and slowly stood till he was facing her.

“Hey there, clumsy, you gotta be more careful when you’re making your way through a spooky haunted building, or you might run into a ghost instead of the love of your life,” Sasha said with a wink, before making her way down the hallway.

Tim quickly followed her, stumbling over his words as he offered to drive her to the bar from last night to grab her car, to which she agreed.

They piled into Tim’s car, and drove to the bar, the tension in the car becoming so thick you could cut it with a knife. Tim wasn’t sure why conversation was suddenly so hard to make, and the silence was deafening as they pulled into the parking lot. They sat there for a few minutes, just staring anywhere but at each other.

Finally, Sasha broke the silence and turned towards Tim, looking at him for the first time in almost half an hour.

“What are we Tim? What do you want us to be?” She asked. It sounded like the words were being dragged out of her against her will, and it hurt Tim’s heart to hear her speak that way.

Tim had to think about his answer carefully, so he just took a minute staring at a treeline in the distance. “I think... I would love for us to be something, Sasha. You’re such a wonderful girl and anyone would be lucky to have you.

“In all these years that I’ve known you, you’ve always managed to blow me away. You’re sweet, you’re kind, you’re witty. You are so perfect in every way, and it took me a while to realize that. All these years we’ve played this “will they, won’t they?” game and all I wanted to do was finally be like “they will”. I’ve wanted to make you mine for awhile now, I just didn’t know how to go about it,” Tim was pouring his heart out at this point, completely relying on his feelings to get his point across.

“I want to make you happy. I want to give you a life that you can look back on and smile at when we’re old and married. I want to grow old with you. I want to build a house and a family with you, and be able to invite our friends over and have dinner and laugh about stupid shit. I want you to become my life,” Tim felt the tears building behind his eyes. This was the first time he’d cried since his brother had disappeared, and it felt refreshing. It felt right, knowing it was because of his love for Sasha.

From the looks of it, Sasha was also crying. When Tim finished his speech, he saw a single tear roll down her cheek. He brought his hand up to her face and held it, using his thumb to wipe away the tear.

“Fuck, Tim, I didn’t know you had that little love confession rooting around in your brain,” She laughed gently, and it tugged at Tim’s heart.

“Can I kiss you?” He asked, hoping against hope that she fully reciprocated his feelings.

She barely had time to nod before Tim was cupping her whole face and kissing her. He reveled in how soft her lips were, and how well her face fit in his hands. Sasha’s hand circled around Tim’s right wrist and drew him ever closer.

This day just couldn’t get any better.

When they finally disconnected, Tim had the courage to ask her to come over to his place, and, to his surprise, she agreed. He quickly texted her his address and then they were on their way in their respective cars. Tim was giddy again, riding the high of kissing Sasha for the second day in a row. Usually he couldn’t even get a second date, let alone a second kiss.

Most people were turned off at the fact that he worked at the Institute, almost like they believed he was a bad luck charm. All his dates seemed to go wrong in some way, no matter how many different scenarios he tried to set up. It was always once the girl or guy found out where he worked, they seemed to almost... fear him? The dates didn’t last much longer after that. He had basically given up on dating.

Until Sasha.

When they had met at the Archives, it was an instant connection. Conversation was easy between them, and there was plenty of banter to go around between them. It gained them a lot of curious glances from other people at their work, but they knew they were just friends. Until...

Until one day in the Archives, when Sasha was sorting through the Storage to find something Tim needed for a follow up. He had just been idly watching her as she sifted through what he thought was a mess, but she claimed she had a system.

He noticed how well her eyes had matched her outfit that day. And how her lipstick made her lips look incredibly appealing. And how well her body looked in the outfit she was wearing...

And he was suddenly brought back to the moment when Sasha waved the item he needed in his face, making some joke about staring that he couldn’t quite remember. He had laughed it off as a friendly gesture. There was nothing wrong with people thinking their friends were attractive.

But it kept happening. He would notice himself zoning out and thinking about Sasha. The way she looked, the way she laughed. Also, and he would never tell this secret to anyone as long as he lived, he had had a few sex dreams about her that had caused him to wake up more confused than ever.

And here he was, in the present, having just confessed all these feelings he had been holding back for years. He felt light and airy, as if a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. And in a way, a weight had been lifted. He no longer needed to hide his feelings from Sasha anymore. Whether she reciprocated them fully or not was a whole other story. She had barely said anything about it, just kissed him- which was more than enough, but-

Tim smacked himself in the side of the head. He shouldn’t let his thoughts get the best of him. He just needed to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. Not that Sasha was a horse, of course-

By the time the pair arrived at Tim’s flat, he had gone through every possible scenario that was about to play out. Most of them had turned out bad, but when he tried to reason with his brain why things would end out bad, it wouldn’t give him a solid reason. He almost felt sick, but when his eyes connected with Sasha’s, all was right again.

It was almost like she could read his thoughts and school her expression to respond to his crazy mind. It was another thing he loved about her; she was always able to get him to calm down and see the bigger picture instead of focusing on all the small problems.

He didn’t realize that he had a goofy smile on his face until Sasha walked over to him and looked expectantly with her own smile on her face. He quickly set himself in motion and led her up to his flat, opening the door for her and pretending to be a chivalrous gentleman, even bowing as she passed him in the doorway.

This earned him an eye roll from Sasha, but the smile hadn’t left her face. She truly was beautiful. As he closed the door, his other hand shot out and caught at her right wrist, spinning her into him and pinning her against the entrance hallway, careful to not knock her into any of the knick-knacks that scattered the wall.

“Please tell me, Sasha. Tell me you love me and that you want to be with me, or tell me that you just would rather be friends. It’s killing me that you’re playing coy with me,” Tim was practically pleading with her at this point. He couldn’t take the waiting much longer or he might explode.

“Tim, will you be my boyfriend?” Sasha asked, completely throwing off Tim’s thought process. Apparently he hadn’t thought of every situation, as he had no comeback for this question. What had just happened?

“Sasha I... O-of course I’ll be your boyfriend! Are you kidding me?” He answered, mentally kicking himself in his head for sounding so desperate and taken aback. Sasha, though, was smiling as if she’d just won the lottery.

“You’re cute when you’re flustered,” Was all she said before connecting their lips once again. This kiss was slow and almost agonizing. It’s one that spoke the unspoken word between. It was a kiss that made up for the years of stepping on eggshells around each other when it came to their romantic lives.

Tim was beginning to lose count of how many times things had just clicked for him that day. Everything about it had been perfect. Everything from breakfast with Sasha, to messing around with his friends, and now coming home and actually getting to say that he was Sasha’s boyfriend. He hoped this feeling would never go away.

They sat in Tim’s living room for hours after that, talking about all the signs that the other had missed during their time as friends. The times Sasha had intentionally worn something more revealing to work just so Tim would notice and say something- he never did. The way that Tim’s eyes would linger on Sasha’s face when she was talking about something she was passionate about- she never noticed either.

It was easy for them to laugh at each other for being so obvious, but it was just as easy to laugh at themselves for being so clueless.

Sometime in the night- they weren’t paying attention to the clock- Tim busted out drinks and made them martinis. Just like he’d hoped, Sasha was impressed and even clapped when he presented her drink to her. When you lived alone and had nothing better to do, you learn odd hobbies just to keep yourself from going insane.

So they drank, but not enough so that they couldn’t pay their full attention to the conversation they were having.

Tim kept commenting on how beautiful Sasha was, and each time without fail, Sasha would blush and start tripping over her words. Tim thought it was the most adorable thing ever, so of course he kept doing it. He loved the way she would smile, and her ears would flair up red along with her cheeks.

He suddenly longed to touch her soft skin, so he did. Reaching across the small space that separated them on the couch, he cupped her jaw with his left hand, and placed his drink down on the table.

She leaned into his hand, much like a cat when you pet it. Tim’s heart swelled in his chest and he grinned as he stared into Sasha’s eyes. Her eyes flicked all over his face and he suddenly wanted to know what she was thinking.

As if on cue, she spoke as she reached up to grab Tim’s hand in her own. “You know, I don’t know if everyone in the Archives is even going to be surprised or not. I get the feeling that everyone knew we were gonna get together more than we did,” She spoke, her hand squeezing his tighter.

This made Tim chuckle as he spoke. “I think you’re right. Though, I think we might give Jon a heart attack if we tell him. He’s so invested in his work all the time that he barely pays attention to anything else anymore.

Sasha looked sad at that, sighing before speaking. “Well, guess he can find out when he gets an invitation for our wedding.”

“That’s only if you can get to the status of “engaged” with this sexy fellow,” Tim joked while puffing out his chest and putting on a “big guy” attitude, which earned him a belly laugh from Sasha. It was wonderful to hear.

Abruptly, Tim got up from the couch with bravado and walked over to his Bluetooth speaker. He connected his phone to it as Sasha stared him with a goofy grin on her face. Music began to fill the room, slow and classical.

Tim walked up to Sasha, sat on the couch and extended a hand, which she took immediately. She was swept off the couch as Tim practically yanked her up and into his arms. He was rewarded with a yelp and a look of embarrassment on her face.

“What are you-” Sasha began before Tim started to dance with her. He spun her gracefully, and held her against him as they swayed gently to the music.

Soon she got the idea and danced skillfully with him, taking the lead sometimes, much to Tim’s surprise. He let her take the lead and laughed heavily when she dipped him. As he was staring up at her, her smile was real and chaotic, and it caused his face to mirror hers. He was so happy.

He leaned up his body enough to kiss her once more, quickly, and was rewarded with her chasing his lips when he pulled away.

“Ah ah ah, we can’t be too greedy, now can we?” He said before standing up fully. All of a sudden, waves of exhaustion rolled over him and all he wanted to go to bed.

He reached for one of Sasha’s wrists and held it with both hands. He looked down at the ground and his voice came out weakly. “Will you stay with me tonight?”

Sasha tilted his face up with a single finger under his chin and smiled at him gently. “Of course I will. I just might need to borrow some of your clothes because I didn’t bring my own.”

It took all of Tim’s willpower to not jump around the whole living room. Instead he just nodded and led Sasha to his bedroom, where he threw a pair of his sweatpants and an old t-shirt. She got dressed in the bathroom and when she came out, Tim was shirtless and in old basketball shorts.

Sasha walked over to him and placed both of her palms flat on his bare chest, and the feeling sent shivers up Tim’s spine.

“Thank you for today,” Was all she said before she walked over to the bed and got under the covers. Tim was stuck in place until he finally snapped out of it and also got into bed, turning off the light on the way.

And they slept, better than either of them had in a long time. When they awoke in the morning, they found themselves tangled in each other. Everything was exactly as it was supposed to be, and neither of them were inclined to change that.

The End

P.S. they lived happily ever after and married each other and nothing bad ever happened to them and they grew old together and if anyone says anything otherwise i’ll be mad >:(

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This one took me forever ahh!! I worry that it’s boring in some parts and that they aren’t exactly in character but i’m still proud! I wanted to try writing a longer one and that’s how this was born! I hope you enjoyed and don’t be afraid to hit my ask box! Also show some love to my ao3

Words: 5293

#the magnus archives #tma #my work #Tim Stoker #Timothy Stoker #Sasha James #Sasha x Tim #Tim x Sasha #tma fanfic #holy crap i love them!#theyre such amazing bicons #the Bi representation we need!#this one was very hard #and took me two days #i listened to a whole lot of Panic! writing this #hopefully that doesnt show #enjoy!!

73 notes · View notes

oh-mother-of-darkness · 4 years

Text

asks (26)

@spickerzocker said:

hey there! just a heads up that i tried to click on the "why i don't ship" explanation link in your faq and it says that there is no post with that url/it's generally broken. also your "a conversation about recovery" thing is beautiful and hurts in the best way and i love it. have a nice day!

Yes, I intentionally took that link down awhile ago, and last night I went and updated some of the tabs on my blog. Here are my basic thoughts:

I wrote that link years and years ago, while I was first navigating the internet and while I was still figuring out important things about my own identity and opinions. I ran my blog differently back then, but by the end of the first few months, I knew I was uncomfortable with shipping.

As people began to interact with me and my work, I told them over and over again no, I don’t want to talk about that, and I don’t want to write about it, and it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t think that was a common position to take at the time, so it wasn’t what people expected from me.

During those years, I felt like I had to justify myself and give a valid explanation. I wrote that post explaining why I had that boundary, and I put it in a place where anyone could find it.

I said no when people asked, let them make jokes about it, and made jokes about it myself in response. As time went on I got more and more exasperated when I had to repeat myself. I wrote definite rules into my ask box, request tab, and FAQ. People still asked. I wrote it into my description. People still asked.

The truth is yeah, there’s a pretty simple explanation for my discomfort. It makes sense. It’s easy to understand, and most folks think it’s a “good enough” reason to leave me alone. The difference between young-me and current-me is that I no longer feel the need to justify myself.

None of y’all need to know why I set the boundaries that I set. My explanation isn’t relevant, and I’m not obligated to give it. I said no. That’s enough.

I think a good number of folks remember my explanation from the past, and I don’t mind that at all. There may be a time where I talk about it again, in a more appropriate context, so I guess we’ll see.

That’s a lot of information in response to a very helpful ask. Thanks! The link is gone now, and I’m so pleased that you enjoyed the fic :)

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Anonymous said:

U suck

Kenza sent this anon as a joke. She’s right, and I thank her.

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Anonymous said:

I'm a doctor and ive seen it all.....but the milk fic made me gag

Excellent

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@wingedskyes said:

Ah. Wait. I wasn't on anon....uhm. oh well. It's fine. I like milk and am not ashamed. 😆

I don’t think I received another message from you actually, but I too like milk and I’m glad we’re on the same page

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@thelittleredheadedmusician said:

To add to the milk discussions: my best friend from home and best friend from college have each finished a gallon a milk by themselves within 2 days.

I do that too, every once in awhile. When the milk craving hits it’s a gallon a day

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Anonymous said:

"TIM! POUR HIM. A GLASS OF M A L K!"

Hold on I have to google some things

Yeah this is funny

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Anonymous said:

I have read that milk fic three separate times and every time I’m laughing just as hard as Tim and dick by the end it’s just so excellently executed and builds so perfectly that by the time dick cracks I’m ready to go too and I just lose it it’s amazing I love it

Awww anon I’m so pleased :)

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@the-smartass-under-the-mountain said:

Just wanted to drop by and say your recent fic with Tim antagonizing Damian with increasingly outrageous milk concoctions had me giggling. It was so cute and refreshing to see Dick enjoying Tim's little prank. And Bruce's reaction to just... walk away was fantastic!

Thank you! I’m always so thrilled when y’all think the jokes hit

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@njtheboywonder said:

I havnt really enjoyed a fic in years, but i stopped to read ur fanfic with tim drinking milk just to fuck w dami amd it made me smile. Thanks, for writing it.

Oh that warms my heart <3

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@bruciewayneisbatman said:

Tim Is totally the guy who would drink ridiculous amounts of dalgona coffee to annoy damian, according to that fic.

Had to google that one, but I guess so huh

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Anonymous said:

(diff anon) but that birthday fic was so good oml and you have opened my eyes as to the batfam in quarantine this is such a Concept

We’re all here dying..... together...

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Anonymous said:

Happy birthday! 🎉 or belated! 🎂 thank you for being in the fandom. 😊

Anonymous said:

To anon! Sorry. I forgot to add that! Anyway, thanks to them we get a lovely fic. I hope you have many more birthdays! 😊

Message for you anon

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Anonymous said:

Your writing gives off good vibes

Hear that guys I “passed my vibe check.” Is that what the youth say these days? I am an elder now and I do not know

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Anonymous said:

finding your blog while being relatively new to batman fandom is such a bliss. your batfam content especially is *chef's kiss* amazing.

Thank you my darling :) I’m glad you’re here

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Anonymous said:

Best line in a fic? Hard to pick just one, but this particular one from "Just Desserts" by fyeahbatmanandrobin on Tumblr is one of my faves: “Anyone else would be hard-pressed to provide the particular brand of excitement you bring to my life, Dami.”

@noisypaintersong said:

For the line thing: "I don't doubt it. Bruce Wayne, the unexpectedly normal guy wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a superhero wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a fake socialite wrapped in a businessman wrapped in a secretive billionaire." He paused. "…You're the seven-layer burrito of Gotham," he pondered. - Barry to Bruce in 'Of Friends and Foes' by Paganpunk2 on FFN. It's one of the funniest things I've read someone say to Bruce LOL

@kirakats submitted:

Anonymous said:

“I do know that according to everyone else, there is no chance, no future, no universe where I stay a hero.” Describes my frustration with the way DC treats Damian so accurately. Let the kid be a hero dammit.

Thanks! That’s really helpful. I’ve got a decent answer to my question now.

@kurawastaken submitted:

So this is Kenza retaliating against me for the milk fic. I very much hate tomatoes and specifically ketchup. This photo (1) is a nightmare and (2) fulfills its intended purpose.

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Anonymous said:

I love your blog!!!

And I love you

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Anonymous said:

quick question: how do you think jason reconciles with the fam?? i think in the comics they kinda just reboot and now he’s on better terms. but like what conversations happened, yknow??? (you’re doin great work by the way, it rips out my heart but it’s great)

This is an amazing question, and I’ll be thinking about it for the next bit, I think. That would be a really interesting topic to explore in depth

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@angel-gidget said:

*hugs you real tight* would you please send this to the first 10 people in your dash? Make sure someone gets a hug today and stay safe!

Oh thank you for the hug <3

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Anonymous said:

I hadn’t been aware of that Memphis petition, but I live in Memphis too (Altho I know you said you just grew up there so you may not be living here currently haha) so ig I just wanted to say thanks for bringing it to my attention!

!!!

I’ve been in Texas for six years now, ever since I started school, but I’m still in and out of Memphis for family purposes. Love the trash heap of my birth

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@damianwaynerocks said:

hey! any chance you know of any other dc heroes around damian’s age?

Sure! You could try Billy Batson, Jon Kent, or Maya Ducard

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Anonymous said:

hi! i don't know if it's okay to leave anons like these but ive been feeling down because my country has passed a bill that deprives us of lots of human rights freedom and i want you to know that i just found your blog through the damian/bruce + justice fic and it comforted me. im slowly going thru your works and so far they are all comforting. i love your stuff, thank you.

Philippines? I’ve heard some things, and I’m real sorry y’all’re going through that. I don’t know that there’s anything I could say about that to help, but I hope you’re finding joy somewhere

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@awesomeness-ofgaybitches said:

Tumblr hates you. The links in your bio and to your fic masterlist don't work on mobile. I'm sorry.

FUCK

#I'd like to also take this opportunity to note that at this time #I have blocked 7 people for variations on #okay no ships but what about sailboats??#but what about the TITANIC #here's a picture of the bat-boat tho #guess what kids it's not creative or funny #and I explicitly said that jokes will get you blocked #I follow through #asks

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deepdisireslonging · 4 years

Text

Chapter 21 Extended Cut: BTE Ride-Along with Mox and Y/N

Series Masterlist Here

Chapter 21: Speaking Without Talking

***

“Are we going to talk now?”

“A few more miles.”

You still weren’t ready.

“How’s Cincinnati?”

Your eyebrows shot up. Then you tilted your head. At least it was a start. “It’s fine. The Graeter’s in Fountain Square closed down.”

“What!”

“Most of Fountain Square is shut down. They opened a Frisch’s, though.”

He frowned and grumbled, “because Cincy needed another Frisch’s.”

The seat was uncomfortable. “Most of the good places in Cincinnati have disappeared since you moved to Vegas.” The tone of your voice didn’t have a drop of guilt-tripping in it, and he knew it. His car seat was uncomfortable too.

“Why’d you show up tonight?”

“I was told to take my issues to the source. And I have had an issue since you crashed my announcement night.” Shifting in your seat again, you licked your lips. “I can’t seem to get out from under your shadow. I had a total career through Ohio Valley, NXT, and then you showed up. It was good to see you, I’ll admit. But I had kind of been hoping we wouldn’t meet… until November.”

“Until November?” He grinned. “Wow. I think I would have crashed your show at some point, if I hadn’t already.” A hard breath caught your attention. “If I had known the whole thing was your idea… I would have waited. I- uh. I never did get say… I’m sorry for- for crashing your ‘announcement.’”

Why were your lips so dry? Why was this making you so nervous? “Do you have any suggestions how to- how to become my own woman again?”

“Keep being you. They’ll forget or the ah, the Universe will tell them to let it go. Eventually.” The leather on the steering wheel creaked under his grip. “You don’t have to be me. I was an accident. You- you’re a whirlwind.”

You shook your head. Under your skin, your blood was beginning to boil again. “Why do people compare us at all? So what. We share the same blood, and we were born in the same city. Big deal. We are two completely different people. I’m not you.”

“Damn right you’re not,” he said with a grin.

“I’ve got my own legacy to build.” It came out harder than you meant, making Mox’s forehead crease.

“Good for you. But don’t forget your roots.”

“My roots?!” You turned in your seat. “You were struggling through the end of your run on WWE, you abandoned Cincinnati about the time I was gaining momentum, and I wanted to ask you about wrestling options. AEW was about to jumpstart. You were about to jump ship. And I couldn’t find you. Your friends in Cincy, the ones who trained both of us, couldn’t contact you. I was a nobody. What could I do? Waltz up to WWE headquarters and demand a phone call with you? I was alone. What roots do I have? I’m the one who’s kept up with our trainers. I’ve kept up with the local guys who sneaked us treats for lunch. You ran away. Left us all behind. Now that I’m in my own league, I’ve tried to make my own name. I should hate you for destroying the base I made for myself.”

“But?”

Your cheeks were warm, right under the surface. It wasn’t time to cry yet. “But I want your help. And I hate it.”

He nodded. “That’s fair. I thought I’d never be able to escape the Shield. Every time we were in the same ring- the same building sometimes! Every time, commentary and the Universe would demand the links between us. Yes, I ran away. I needed it. What do you need? What do you need, Y/N, to move forward-”

“I want to be me!” Heaving, you gripped the handle on the door instead of digging your nails into your palms. “Every time I step into the arena I feel like I’m putting on a mask. I wear one all the time anyway, as protection. I am my own woman, my own wrestler and athlete. People know who I am as a competitor without needing to know my inner self. That is for me only. Titles are great; they show off your skill. But they’re not everything. I don’t want to lose my sense of self for anything or anyone. But now I’m having to hide everything.”

“That’s the business sometimes. You’ll handle it.”

“I don’t want to handle it. I want to just be seen as I am: the best wrestler in Cincinnati. Without having to fight against the legacy already there.”

Mox laughed. “You’re not the best in Cincinnati.”

“Yes, I am. You moved to Vegas, remember?” Just as quickly as tension had suffocated the car, it dissipated like one of you had rolled the windows down.

Blissful silence gave you both time to think. And then Mox poked a needle into your chest.

“You’re not going to erase me,” he said calmly.

Pinching the bridge of your nose, you sighed. “I’m not trying to erase you. And, as angry as I am, I am proud to- to- I’m proud of us. Okay? I’m proud of us. Coming up from nowhere. But, damn, if I don’t want to punch your face in for screwing up my plans,” you ended with a giggle.

“Snot-nosed kid.”

“Bloody bastard.”

Mox mock gasped. “Hey, that’s your Aunt you’re insulting.”

The car shook with how hard you two laughed. As the miles rolled by, the conversation morphed into family memories. You were reminded how much you missed your cousin, and having Mox as a cousin. Both of you were little menaces before he quit high school and really dug into wrestling. Terrorizing your moms. Terrorizing the whole neighborhood. All the times you wrestled each other out of trouble. The job you both ended up in was the only option, come to think about it.

“And then you really wailed on him,” you ended the story with a laugh. “We could do it, you know. We could fight.”

He glanced at you. “What, at Collision Course? I thought you were trying to avoid me.”

“Sure.” You shrugged. “What better way to cement my own legacy than beat you to a bloody pulp? You’re Jon Moxley. You can take it.” You winked.

With a grin, Mox tossed back, “if you think that’s what would happen. I think it would end completely different.”

“Of course you do.”

Taking a deep breath, you had to breach one more thing. “If I asked, no matter what happens in November, would- would you ever fight me again. Or… or fight by my side. As much as I’ve fought it up till tonight, I wouldn’t mind having-

“You’re not going to convince me to come back to WWE.”

You swallowed. Hard. And accepted. “I know.” You knew he’d never agree to something that big. But, “it’s just… the way you act and talk about… it’s like it was all bad.”

Mox didn’t look at you. Couldn’t or wouldn’t, you couldn’t determine.

“I know you always loved fighting. You had to fight your way out. Then- It would be… not nice, but... helpful to have a heads up about how much I’m going to have to fight from the inside. I’m not a big name yet, and I’m still sorta under the radar, give or take this whole ordeal. But I’ll probably have to fight eventually, right?”

Mox sighed and tried not to look too tired. Tried not to scare you with a look. It didn’t work. He pulled the car to the side of the road.

“I can’t help you with the McMahons.” Just saying their name made the steering wheel creak again. “But I will fight you at Collision Course. If that’s what you want. Is it?” Finally, he looked at you. His shoulders looked as tense as your spine felt.

“Yeah.”

He nodded. “Alrighty then. You tell your people; I’ll tell mine.” He drove back onto the highway. “And, for the record,” he looked into the cameras set up by the Bucks, “I think you’re handling the McMahons better than anyone else ever could. Me included. And I can’t wait to see what you do next, on Raw and after November.”

Now, you might cry. You swallowed it back. “Th- thank you.”

He drove to the airport, dropped off the car, and split ways from you at the gate. You headed to the next city for your job, and he headed towards his. On either side of the country.

#Thicker than Blood #TTB Deleted Scenes #jon moxley #Cousin!Mox #cousin!reader

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savrenim · 4 years

Text

okay so looking at tma fic in general and tma time-travel fic and the various ways they decide to resolve things has given me an idea for a time travel fix-it fic premise that, like, I almost certainly will never write because way too many writing projects but it is Haunting me so I need to blab about it somewhere

so clearly the way that the ‘time travel’ / ‘knowledge of the future’ bit works is that Jon stumbles across a book that he assumes is a Leitner but then there’s no name in the front cover so he opens it proper and oooh this is weird but it’s too late the compulsion has set hold and and reads it, oops

the experience of reading it is the experience of fuck-it-feels-like living the entire timeline of the show up through the end of episode 160

(actually all the way through When Jon Finally Dies if he ever does but the important bit is he gets that knowledge of the timeline)

(the book is channeling the power of the Ceaseless Watcher, it’s all about knowledge, although very specifically in my brain this book is something that future!Jon and future!Martin constructed and sent back, which still tracks because hey Archivist is an Avatar of the Watcher. it’s just important to me that this is active action as an attempt to prevent the apocalypse and not dumb luck)

so Jonathan Sims now knows his future and because I have strong opinions about memory/ personality/ what makes a person, has arguably just been replaced with his future self.

‘oh fuck’ Jon says

‘I ended the world so I gotta fix this’

but how does he fix this, because oops Elias is still stupidly powerful and is going to notice if anything is up so he can’t act weird

but he can’t bring anyone else in on this because he doesn’t want to Curse Them with such Angsty Knowledge

he is acting a little bit weird, Martin notices that he’s acting weird because he is now being nice to Martin

‘this cannot be how the universe exists, Jon is always mean to me,’ Martin goes. ‘like I want the universe to exist this way but Something Is Up With Jon and it would be selfish of me not to investigate just because Jon is actually being nice to me’

Martin stumbles across the book and reads it too

‘oh fuck’ Martin says and immediately goes and talks to Jon and Jon has terrible selfish mixed feelings because he missed his Martin but also didn’t want Martin to have to go through everything he went through but also now Jon is not alone in trying to figure out how to alter this timeline without Elias noticing

(’wait what gave me away,’ Jon goes)

(’you were being nice to me,’ Martin goes)

(’fuck I really do need to be meaner to everyone don’t I,’ Jon goes. ‘it’s just really hard I’ve had Character Growth and I don’t want to be an asshole again’)

(’well suck it up you’re going to blow our cover,’ Martin goes. ‘maybe you should have thought of that before Being An Asshole.’ he immediately feels bad at Jon’s Very Sad Face. ‘you weren’t actually that much of an asshole you were just under stress and prickly and didn’t realize that the people you weren’t appreciating could be people that you would lose and now you do and that’s fine but you gotta still treat them like you’re an Asshole.’)

(’fine,’ Jon goes.)

so now they’re trying to figure out how to stop Elias

but also their main priority is to stop Tim and Sasha from dying at this point and they kind of figure that Elias doesn’t know the timeline and as long as he’s getting what he wants which is naive Jon stumbling through interactions with Entities and getting marked but not killed, he won’t suspect anything, and he doesn’t know Tim and Sasha are going to die so that at least is something immediate they can fix

‘I want to murder Jonah,’ goes Martin

‘you are super valid but also Gertrude tried that and was 1000% more badass than any of us and she ended up dead so maybe we should concentrate on saving our friends like we’ve got a few years to figure out how to do that,’ goes Jon

‘fine,’ goes Martin

Tim and Sasha notice that something is up, OBVIOUSLY, because Jon was weird-nice for like a week and a half then is weird-mean like he’s actually trying to be mean and hates it, and has gone from brushing off Martin all the time to pretending to brush Martin off but obviously secretly pining

he also gives off feral apocalypse energy

Martin meanwhile is pulling this all off perfectly

he fooled Elias and Peter and everyone else back when he was faking out the Lonely, he can handle this

Elias does notice Jon acting weird and thinks this is a soap opera workplace romance gone wrong but because he hasn’t seen all of it as Jon and Martin have been very careful to be using Martin’s Lonely powers when they want to Actually Talk and make it look like they’ve just casually wandered off when Elias isn’t paying attention to them so Elias doesn’t actually look like anything is up, he calls Jon in for a ‘performance review’ to make sure

(Martin has Lonely powers and Jon has Archivist powers from the future and they can both feed off of the long terrible fears that they remember from the horrible horrible lives and deaths they and the entire world had in their own timeline, just give me this I need a plot device that can explain why they can Actually Talk to each other while not being able to use the tunnels)

anyways Elias starts his performance review and pokes about Martin

‘um yeah,’ Jon confesses. ‘I um had a very awkward conversation with Martin because it seemed like he was being nice to me and I asked him about his feelings and he Confessed to me that he Liked me and I was caught by surprise and was thinking about it for a few days because idk nobody ever Likes me but then came to my senses and um but also it’s totally inappropriate because I’m his boss and I told him and we’re trying to forget that the conversation ever happened and just go back to concentrating on the statements’

‘you seem very nervous right now,’ Elias goes

‘please do not report me to HR,’ Jon goes looking appropriately mortified and trying to remember everything Martin has been coaching him about lying by telling people what they want to hear. ‘I know I should have rejected him immediately it just caught my by surprise that he would actually Say It To My Face people have been saying a lot of honest things to my face it’s very weird and I know that I shouldn’t have run away from that conversation and acted Weird for a few days but I did come to the Correct Conclusion I am very devoted to this job and don’t want to do anything but this job and didn’t do anything with Martin we just had a conversation and I’m really trying to do a good job here and please don’t fire me’

‘nope you’re good that’s fine concentrate on your job,’ Elias says, quite satisfied that his Archivist is developing truth powers very quickly

Tim and Sasha are not so easy to fool

Tim and Sasha find the book

Sasha, who worked in Artifact Storage, is Actually Smart and goes ‘dON’T READ THAT’

Tim reads it anyways

‘oh fuck I die stopping the apocalypse’

Tim doesn’t seem to die from reading the book and doesn’t seem to change except for being given this foreknowledge but Sasha is Smart so she doesn’t read it. Tim does fill her in on her future.

‘oh fuck I die when a weird worm-lady attacks? and don’t even get to help with the apocalypse? that’s bullshit.’

they start their own little huddle conspiracy

which Martin immediately finds

‘nO YOU GUYS YOU GOTTA BE MORE CAREFUL TALKING ABOUT THIS STUFF’ Martin explains the future and methods of communicating without Elias watching, which is mostly him subtly hiding them in the Lonely

(’why do you and Jon have secret special powers that’s not fair,’ Tim goes)

(’because we went through literal hell??? and also didn’t die??? idk maybe if we keep you from dying you will also get special powers but seriously Tim they are very evil these are Evil Powers we don’t want them they just kind of happened to us in the process of trying to survive,’ Martin goes.)

‘so what is the plan,’ Sasha goes. ‘like besides us not dying how are you actually going to deal with the real apocalypse’

‘well we want to kill Elias but we haven’t figured that out yet because he’s watching our every move perfectly and if we’re not acting like he think we should act he’ll dispose of us and start again with a new Archivist,’ Martin goes.

‘okay but like in your story there is a part where Peter Lukas personally escorts you to the panopticon and tells you to kill Elias/Jonas and you go no and Elias wins the bet,’ Sasha says. ‘what if you just murder him then, he says he wasn’t going to stop you and if he tries you’ve got another Avatar backing you up’

‘huh we didn’t think of that,’ Martin goes. ‘why didn’t we think of that. I swear there is a Very Good Reason we didn’t think of that. um. uh. there’s also the problem anyone working in the Archives will die if he dies unless they are powerfully enough connected the Ceaseless Watcher which is like. MAYBE Jon.’

‘W H Y did you not lead with that,’ Tim goes

‘yeah I really agree you should have led with that,’ Sasha goes

‘this has been a very stressful time and we have been doing our best and right also everyone can quit they just need to blind themselves to do it,’ Martin goes. ‘or I guess pledge allegiance to a different evil god but that is really unpleasant you have to sacrifice fear to it or you starve’

(’okay why did you not lead with--’ Sasha goes. ‘I’m starting to really see some benefits for being an evil fear-monster,’ Tim goes. ‘Like we could be ethical evil fear-monsters. like ethical vampires. only scare really shitty terrible people who deserve it and, like, scare but not kill.’)

(Martin looks like he is about to cry.)

(’okay maybe not p l e a s e stop making that face I cannot stand your puppy-dog-but-also-on-the-verge-of-tears eyes,’ Tim goes)

(Sasha stops death-glaring at him as Martin looks slightly less like he is about to cry.)

‘so everyone loves rituals what if we, like. construct a secret ritual. that you’re saying Jon is dumb powerful chosen one Avatar right so let’s just, like. switch over being the ‘Heart of the Institute’ from Jonah to him. big proper paperwork ritual passing on of ownership claiming his position as Jonah’s heir or something,’ Sasha says

‘that seems like just the sort of bullshit that might actually work. Sasha you are the smartest person in the world and I’m pretty sure the apocalypse wouldn’t have happened if you had survived the Prentiss attack,’ Martin says

‘actually honestly Gertrude wanted you as her replacement that sounds very true and is probably why Elias didn’t choose you,’ Jon says. he has entered the room at this point as he was curious where literally all of his assistants had wandered off to. he does actually have work to get done the Archives are A Mess and Martin has been gone at this point for far longer than it takes to Make Tea so he figured something might be up and if there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s finding Martin in the Lonely

‘real rude to not let us in on this,’ Tim goes. ‘also are you SURE this is not a weird Leitner fucking with you’

‘we’ve obsessively kept track of the things that are supposed to be happening and they’re all happening on the right days and stuff,’ Jon goes.

‘okay so let’s stop like two apocalypses and not die,’ Sasha goes.

the rest of the fic is everyone subtly not-so-subtly trying to recreate the exact timeline while also making events Less Terrible while also trying to seem Not Too Competent

because this is a fic there’s gotta be adorable ridiculous fluff so everyone decides that the Cover Story in case Elias thinks people are acting weird has got to be Jon and Martin starting to secretly date

(Jon and Martin are in absolute h e l l over this and it is a hilarious comedy of errors because they didn’t tell everyone else that they got together they both decided that was too private so everyone else is aggressively trying to actually matchmake them through this all and they’re now too embarrassed to drop the act because Sasha has been giving them hell every time they have accidentally withheld information from her so it’s like. three layers of fake dating.)

(Elias decides all this drama is simultaneously the funniest thing he’s ever seen but also kind of a Bad Distraction and is subtly trying to break them up but doesn’t want to mess with things too much because he is Very Impressed with all the ‘progress’ Jon is making)

(Jon who is a complete badass and is mostly desperately attempting not to reveal all his powers)

(there are also a lot of different things that can go various ways. like do Basira and Melaine still join the Institute? I think they all read the book and make Informed Decisions about their futures but I have not decided yet what those Informed Decisions are. Daisy learns how to control Hunt powers without it overwhelming her, because Tim is totally right about it being possible to be an ethical fear-monster although as Jon and Martin can draw from the fear of the apocalypse-world they don’t really need it so it’s just a question of whether or not I want to give everyone else cool powers. we’re in a fix-it fic everyone gets cool powers without terrible consequences Because I Say So)

(Elias doesn’t give them trouble over this because he is delighted that he’s kind of collecting avatars of other Entities because it makes it really easy to make sure Jon has marks and he thinks this is his genius plan going even better than expected)

we get to episode 158

Martin really wants to dramatically kill Elias i m m e d i a t e l y but is waiting for a walkie-talkie signal that the ritual above is going as planned so he stumbles through all of the dialogue the same

“Then do it. Kill him and help me save the world.” Peter goes

Martin pauses in silence because oops there’s really not that much more Avoiding he can do

“No” Martin says.

Elias starts to laugh.

The Signal Comes Through

‘fUCK YEAH,’ Martin says. ‘F I N A L L Y. I am murdering him and I’m saving the world but this isn’t for you, asshole, and Imma deal with you next.’

stabbity stab

it’s very satisfying

‘okay but what do you mean it’s not for me, you’re supposed to sit in the chair and help me look for the Extinction?’ Peter goes

‘nah fuck that I’m from the future and I do what I want that was me stopping the Jonah Magnus’s final ritual,’ Martin goes. ‘you really think I fell for that Extinction bullshit you aren’t nearly as good a liar as you think you are, you stay right there and we’ll decide what to do with you when everyone gets down here it’s Jon’s Institute now and we’re both very pissed at you’

Peter tries to escape into the Lonely

it Does Not Work as Martin has More Angst than Peter to draw from so is Way More Powerful

everyone gets down there

ritual worked nobody died!

‘okay but why DON’T we try to look for the Extinction.’ Sasha says. ‘that seems to be a pretty important thing to stop.’

at this point everyone agrees Sasha has the best ideas

have I mentioned that every single female character is very gay for Sasha

quite frankly maybe Tim too

Sasha is a Badass and this fic portrays her as Gertrude Robinson’s Rightful Heir

she Deserves Good Things

and she is Gonna Stop All Future Apocalypses so actually going through with Peter’s plan is maybe not a terrible idea

they do the thing but in a careful way that traps no one in the chair and get the info

the Extinction is still very stoppable

there are lots of ways but honestly the best way to do it is to manipulate humanity into actually Being Better and not being on the brink of extinction

‘this is my Institute now let’s use it to fucking save the world,’ Jon goes

and they use all their knowledge and power to go from being a massive conspiracy about causing the apocalypse to being a massive conspiracy about bringing kindness and preventing wars and stopping the rise of fascism in politics and poking humanity from behind the scenes into something Better that can Rise Above its fears

and everyone lives happily ever after

but yeah this entire fic is around the premise of ‘what if the actual fix-it isn’t Change Everything To Stop Bad Things From Happening it’s Keep Everything The Same Until We’re Handed The Opportunity To Stab Jonah On A Silver Platter And Then Take It’ which I have yet to see a fic do and oops that kind of grew away from me there but anyways that’s it that’s the fic

#tma #the magnus archives #gods I have so many fics but I'm mildly tempted to write this one anyways #maybe if the ending of tma ends up being very sad I will write it #can I write a SINGLE fic without weird time travel bullshit happening?#no #no I cannot

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samgwrites · 4 years

Text

Locked Doors

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Chapter 2 of 2 What happens when your who is returned to your what.

Read on AO3

Michael didn’t want to go to a hospital, and Jon agreed that it would probably be best to not deal with doctors obsessing over someone who had been presumed dead for seven years. Luckily, Tim apparently knew a good amount of wilderness first aid, so after a slightly hectic few minutes trying to find the emergency kit, the current assistant was setting the former assistant’s hand in gauze while Jon had run off to inform the rest of the staff about the current situation. Couldn’t have someone accost the stranger wandering the institute, not again, even if Michael insisted that he would prefer to be out of everyone’s hair as soon as possible.

He would prefer to just be done with the Magnus Institute.

He peered down at Tim as the other man wrapped his hand. Tim was frowning, but the anger from earlier seemed to have vanished from his expression, replaced with a stern focus. Not exactly an approachable look, but that had never stopped Michael before.

“Can I ask you a question?” He said, leaning forward and hiss slightly as Tim tugged a bit too hard on his hand.

“What?” Tim responded, not looking up. Michael sighed.

“It’s sort of a weird request but… can you tell me what I look like?” This did catch Tim’s attention, and he looked up at Michael quizzically.

“What?” Michael glanced aware under the gaze, grinning nervously.

“I haven’t exactly been able to use a proper mirror in a while… it’s been awhile since I’ve seen myself without the distortion ruining the image,” He thought for a moment. “I can’t even remember what it looked like to be honest. I mostly just remember enough neon to be nauseating,” Tim hummed, before dropping Michael’s hand and standing up. Michael frowned, realizing he might be asking too much. “It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me, I know it’s weird-” Tim waved his own hand, running the other one over his face and through his hair.

“It’s… it’s fine. I can tell you. You’re pretty average looking, I guess? You got this blond mop of hair, you’re pretty pale, greyish eyes. I knew about ten guys that could practically be your double from when I was at uni. The weirdest bit is that you don’t even look that different?

“Your hand’s normal, far as I can tell, and your voice doesn’t give me a migraine anymore. You just look like a normal guy. The sweater is a little weird, but it’s not as flashy as I think it was,” Michael looked down at what he was wearing. They were the same clothes from his journey into the mountains, but they were definitely different. They did look older, to start. His jeans were ripped where they hadn’t been. His sweater was worn at the wrists and he figured the coat he’d attempted to lend Gertrude was frozen on a cliff somewhere. He looked back at Tim, and was startled to find the assistant staring intently at him with an odd look that he couldn’t place. Tim turned away.

“Your hand should be fine for now, it’s not a bad break. Try not to use it for awhile if you can.”

“Thank you,”

“Are you really Michael?”

“What?”

“Are you really Michael Shelley? Or is this just some weird trick to lure us into a false sense of security. Those fucking clowns are up to something, woudn’t be that surprised if you were working together,

“The circus? No, I hate the circus-” He cut himself off. Did he hate the circus? He hadn’t actually known about the unknowing before Gertrude decided to feed him to delusion incarnate. Did he hate the Stranger, or was it simply remnants of a thing lodged into him?

No. No he hated it. He could remember that much. The distortion had wanted him to interfere, but so had he. It was a ritual, like the ones Gertrude had been after. If he could throw a wrench in its workings, then perhaps no one else would receive his fate. But that isn’t exactly how that small thought buried in his mind had been realized. His face hardened.

“I hate the Stranger and the Spiral and every other so-called god. My name is Michael Shelley, and if that isn’t who I am then I would prefer someone to let me know now before I get any hope back. Now,” He stood, moving towards the door, “thank you so much for the first aid, but I’d really like to get out of here as soon as possible.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Tim said, voice unsure, glancing between Michael and the door.

“It’s a wonderful idea,” Michael ground out, and left the room. He did not slam the door behind him, but the thought crossed his mind. He had never been one for slamming doors. Perhaps now was the time to start.

Seeing Elias Bouchard in the Hallway before the elevator back up to the library was a bit of a shock.

Well, not a shock. It wasn’t that surprising to see the head of an institute standing in a commonly walked area of said institute. But Michael was not prepared for it in the least. He stumbled and felt himself pale slightly at the sight of the man standing so nonchalantly. This man was a murderer. A direct conduit of the eye.

Michael had met Elias when he’d first started at the institute. The older man had been alright, if a little bit unpleasant to be around. He was intimidating but only in the way that a university student who drinks and parties on weekends is intimidating to someone in secondary school. Which is to say, not that intimidating once you realize how much of an idiot the man is.

The Elias standing in front of him wasn’t an idiot. He’d grown a lot around the time he became the head of the institute. He looked sharp despite his age, and his eyes bore into Michael. After a moment he smiled, and his grin was nearly reflective.

“Mr.Shelley! How wonderful of you come back to us! We’ve missed you,” Michael had seen a hunter before. The distortion had enjoyed trapping one or two in its mazes, giggling as they would chase each other or his other prey around, not noticing that they were being devoured themselves. The expression on the other man was far more predatory than any he’d ever seen on those animalistic creatures. Michael felt his mouth go dry, but it shifted into his usual friendly workplace smile anyway.

“Hello Mr.Bouchard,” He said, “I was actually just leaving. Wouldn’t want to be in your way,” But neither of them moved. The hallway was small, and while Michael was lanky enough that he could have definitely fit on either side of Elias, it felt as if any attempt would end poorly for him. Though he was probably just paranoid. When Elias just continued to look at him, he continued. “Actually, I did want to talk to Jon before I left, have you seen him?”

“Oh, yes, he’s talking to Martin right now. Explaining everything so the poor man doesn’t jump out of his skin when he sees you. Wouldn’t want a repeat of what happened with Tim no would we?” The man’s tone was far too light for how sick Michael was starting to feel. “Especially now that you’ll be working together,”

“What?”

“Oh, well of course! I don’t blame you for not thinking of work, I’m sure your head’s still a little fuzzy, but you never actually resigned. And you’ll need work anyway to get back on your feet. The archival assistant position has actually gotten a higher salary since you’ve been gone. Now, if you could just come up to my office and sign some paperwork…” His voice turned to static in Michael’s ears. What a cruel joke. To still be trapped somewhere after finally escaping hell… but the more he thought about it, the more he sensed a lie.

He remembered thinking about quitting back before Gertrude had started pretending to value him. He had thought a lot about finding a less high stress archiving job, maybe with more people his age, but he’d never been able to bring himself to do it. The spiral had known how the eye trapped people, not terribly unlike how it trapped people in their own broken minds. He didn’t feel that now. There was no reluctance, no hesitation. The sick feeling in his stomach was simply because this man had far too much blood on his hands for anyone to be comfortable talking to him. The eye didn’t have hold on him anymore.

Perhaps he could thank Gertrude for something after all. He grinned back.

“Actually, I’m afraid I won’t be returning to work. Seven years is quite the long vacation, and I’m afraid I’ve forgotten most of what my position entailed aside from being condescended to, and I don’t miss it. Besides, you wouldn’t want any lingering distortion to mix up your carefully organized files, right?” He leveled a stare at Elias, trying to ignore the slight way his unbandaged hand was twitching. “I’d like to find Jon now, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Try the kitchen,” And then Elias walked away, leaving Michael alone once more.

Jon was not in the kitchen. There was, however, a woman that he’d never seen before making tea, who jumped slightly when he opened the door. She seemed a bit younger than him, or maybe just much smaller, with brightly dyed hair wearing a graphic tea. He’d say the spiral had influenced her fashion choices, but she looked far too serious for that to be the case.

“Ah, um, hello,” She started, “Uh… who are you? I don’t think you’re supposed to be down here,” She spoke with an unsure amount of authority.

“I’m Michael. Michael Shelley,” He waited for the flinch or gasp of some sort, but it didn’t come. She just continued to look at him with a sort of sneering disinterest. There was something in her eye that almost seemed familiar, but he chose to ignore it. So Jon hadn’t gotten to explain things to her yet. Well. He’d love a conversation with someone who wasn’t familiar with the monster, and it wasn’t like he was lying. Not completely.

“I know Jon,” He said, trying to sound appeasing, “I needed his help with something so I thought I’d stop by,” She didn’t look convinced.

“Not to be rude mate, but you look like you just got hit by a bus,” Michael laughed in response.

“Honestly I feel like I might have been. I uh, had a bit of an accident this morning,” He held up his wrapped hand, “A regular one of your institute scary stories I think,” Michael could see when she closed off. They stood in silence for a moment, him smiling nervously while moving on the balls of his feet, and her holding her fresh cup of tea looking like she’d lash out if he made any sudden movements. In the end she just shook her head and sighed.

“I think there’s a cot in the store room if you need a place to crash for a bit. Doubt anyone would try to stop you.” She said finally, before taking a long sip of tea and walking out. She might’ve mumbled something rude under her breath, but Michael just nodded absently and stood there for a minute, before turning.

Michael didn’t care about talking to Jon now. He really needed to get out of this institute.

Two days later, they sat across from each other at a coffee shop, both of their reflections looking perfectly natural in the well cleaned window. They had gotten chances to talk in the past couple of days, mainly right outside the institute, so it was nice to just sit in a peaceful environment. Jon had gotten himself the blackest tea that Michael had personally ever seen, and he’d gotten Michael a hot chocolate and a sandwich. Michael stared at the spiral shape of the whipped cream before breaking it with his spoon. They talked for a while, mainly pleasantries, both obviously unsure where to start the serious conversation. Jon broke the peace first.

“Elias is sending me abroad,” Jon said and a small part of Michael panicked.

“I’m not coming,” The words burst out of him before he could think about any other reason Jon might be telling him this.

“What? No, I didn’t mean… I wouldn’t ask you to come. I’m not that dense, I don’t expect you to come, of course not. I just…” Jon trailed off for a moment “I know you’ve been sleeping outside these past few nights.” It wasn’t Michael’s fault he didn’t have enough cash for anything more than a park bench. At least it’s spring, he’d thought. But it wasn’t like he wanted Jon to know that, even if the knowing was unavoidable.

“I-”

“Michael,” The blond man sighed and looked down.

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“I didn’t want to push you, because I know this is hard,” Michael couldn’t stop the slight chuckle that escaped him. Jon smiled at him softly and continued. “You are probably going to have to reenter society eventually? Basira still has some pull with the police, I really don’t think you’ll experience too much trouble in that department. What I wanted to talk to you about is if you’d want to stay at my flat for awhile?”

“It’s fine if you don’t, I know you’re not exactly comfortable with… me… yet,” Jon held up a hand when Michael began to protest and continued, “but I’ll probably be out of the house for a month or so anyway and I’d really appreciate it if you could keep an eye on things,” They both knew that wasn’t the reason. Michael could tell that Jon simply wanted him somewhere safe and to be able to check in, and for him to feel like he was at least somewhat in control of his new normal. Perhaps not all archivists were good liars after all. “And Michael?” Jon reached over and gently touched Michael’s injured hand with his own recently scarred one. “I’d like to be friends,” Michael froze. Those words sounded so familiar. Like they were his in a distant, broken way. They felt safe. They felt true. Michael smiled, perhaps the first purely genuine smile he’d shown in the past few days. In the past few years. And he knew his answer wasn’t a lie.

“I’d love to.”

#the magnus archives #Michael Shelley #michael tma #tma #jonathan sims #my writing #my fanfiction

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eusouomar · 5 years

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Batman Rogue of your choice

I live! Let’s answer some asks before Phlebotomy swallows me whole again!

Batman Rogue of my choice? Obviously I have to go with my favorite. Jonathan Crane aka The Scarecrow!

How I feel about this character

Holy shit how much time do you have? I’ve loved this character ever since I re-entered the Batman fandom about say almost thirteen or fourteen years ago. First of all the idea of “the nerd from hell” as he was called on deviantart really spoke to me. Add to the fact that I had major anxiety disorders for most of my life and I had just taken my first college psych course and I really fell in love with him. He still remains one of my favorite Batman villains, if not just in general comic villains, to this day and I’ll get all ranty if he’s written incorrectly because I’ve grown attached to different source materials.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Nobody that really comes to mind although I would love to see Jon in a relationship. Love and fear have a lot of overlaps especially early on. Plus we know from some of his backlore stories that he was/is a romantic.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

So freakin’ many. First of all the traditional 3bro pairing of him, Riddler, and Mad Hatter. Three intellectual book nerds sniping at each other. Lovely.

There’s also the unholy psychology trinity of him, Harley Quinn, and Dr. Jeremiah Arkham. I live for the few scraps of Jeremiah-Jonathan brotp that exist here on tumblr.

Finally I never thought Scarecrow and Kite-Man would belong in the same sentence but the few panels I’ve seen from City of Bane have just blown me away. Hell yeah.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

That depends on what you define as unpopular. If we’re going by Tumblr standards this isn’t that unpopular at all but if you’re going by what I am unafraid to DC Comics and die hard comic nerds that I meet at cons? Stop. Writing. Jon. As. A. Just. A. Psychopath.

It’s WAY more in character as a man obsessed with fear who embraces it and just wants other people to embrace it as well. Die hard comic nerds LOVE this one dimensional aspect of Jon as a man who’s only thought is about fear but the best Scarecrow stories are ones that remember that he’s also a survivor of abuse who was bullied relentlessly as a child and is an avid professor (or almost professor depending on the writer) of psychology. He doesn’t even gas Kite-Man when Kite-Man admits that he’s scared of Batman because Kite-Man just owns the fear and Jon’s like ‘Yeah, sounds legit’.

Other amazing things about our favorite Master of Fear?

He once escaped Arkham and started a new life as an English teacher in a university. When he finds that one of his students has been “victimized” (it’s a kid’s comic but it’s highly implied that she was raped) he hunts down her rapist and tortures him with a variety of fear toxins. Batman stops him before he can kill the rapist.

Another comic shows Crane in an effort to ransom the city by creating a device that makes people illiterate. When Robin points out that Crane, a professor in his previous life, hasn’t spread fear but only ignorance the effect on him is so powerful that he tears up and gives up the device to Robin.

Finally a third comic shows him gassing a girl and when she yells out for her bullies to stop picking on her it makes him remember his own childhood. Sure he doesn’t make things better when he stitches her a Scarecrow costume of her own and join him as his Mistress of Fear but he’s clearly capable of empathy.

Tl;dr: There’s more to the Scarecrow than just causing fear for the hell of it. He’s a complex character and I wish people would demand that in his stories instead of clapping like seals for writers doing the bare minimum.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

Man, after Catwoman, Man-Bat, Riddler, Clayface, Mr. Freeze, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy have all one point tried to “go good” and team up with Batman I really really need a good guy Scarecrow team up story. Crane would drive Batman absolutely crazy and I am here for every minutes of it. Like most Batman Rogues he and Bats are two sides of the same coin: Fear as both a Weapon and a Motivator. This will probably never happen though so I’m down for any other Scarecrow team ups besides him and Joker. That one has been done to death.

#long post #jonathan crane #the scarecrow #scarecrow #dumb opinion time #I have so many opinions

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katlyn1948 · 5 years

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Saved A Little Trouble for the Next Girl

You guys!! This is my first ever modern au fanfic based off of GOT. It wasn't originally going to be apart of the GOT universe, but that changed real quick. Now, I usually write Gendrya fics, but I wanted to take my hand in writing some Jonerys. Now, I don't know how happy some of you may be with this, but I based it off a song so...It doesn't have a happy ending for our OTP. Nonetheless, I do hope you enjoy! Happy reading!!

The Louisville Slugger felt good in her hands. The slick wood slid in between her finger with ease. And the eight of the bat felt right in her grasp. She lifted the glorified wooden stick and swung with all her might, smashing in the front taillights, shattering them the pieces. Every inch of her body was suddenly released from a tension she didn’t realize she was holding.

This was the finale piece of revenge she had planned and it couldn’t have turned out better.

She stepped back and marveled at the masterpiece in front of her. The four wheel drive looked unrecognizable after she had gotten her hands on it. The tires were slashed, the side keyed, and her favorite; her carved name right into the pristine leather of the driver’s side seat. Every amount of anger when into the damage she had given the $75,000 dollar truck.

It’s not like the son of a bitch didn’t deserve it; he was cheating on her with some red-headed tramp he met when he went up north. Jon had always been a handsome man, and he had a way of making any woman fall head over heels for him, but Dany had trusted him. She always trusted him whenever he went on business trips. Most of the time we would be too preoccupied with business endeavors to even look at woman. But not this time.

It was supposed to be a simple business trip that he was taking with his uncle, Benjin. They owned a brewing company called The Wall and were going up north to negotiate with a smaller brewing company, The Wildling Corp. Instead, it turned into a two month long romp with some chick he meet that worked for the competing brewing company.

Dany was oblivious to the whole ordeal and didn’t find out until nearly a year later.

She hadn’t been snooping, she was merely looking for her phone that she had misplaced around their bedroom. She decided to borrow Jon’s phone, which she never touches, to ring her phone. She was about to hit the dial button when a message from an ‘Ygritte’ popped up. The name wasn’t familiar to Dany and without thinking she opened the message. Her whole world shattered as she read the sultry message written to her husband from a woman she didn’t know. The worse part about the situation is that he had been messaging her back.

Sometimes Dany had wished she never opened the damned message. If she hadn’t then she would still be obliviously happy with a man that she loved. Instead, she was a miserable mess who wanted nothing more than to see the bastard burn.

It took three months to finally catch him in the act and another two months for Dany to muster the courage to enact her revenge. For five bloody months she had to pretend that everything was rainbows and butterflies in their marriage. She loved him and comforted him, she even laid with him in those months, all the while her insides were screaming to choke the life out of him.

It wasn’t easy to catch him, but thanks to his younger sister, who had always loved Dany even if her brother was the biggest idiot in the world, she was able to finally see for herself what Jon had been up to.

Arya had mentioned to Jon about her boyfriend Gendry’s new bar, Hot Pie’s. She suggested that he should check it out and maybe see if they could agree on a brewing contract so Gendry could sell Jon’s beer in the bar. Jon had easily agreed, and considering that bar was an hour outside of where they lived, it would be a perfect place to bring his lover for a late night date.

Dany was grateful for Arya, for her boyfriend was able to snag a few pics of Jon and his lover together at the bar. She had shown them to Dany and was there for her when she began to sob with realization.

The next time Jon went to the bar, Dany had decided to follow him. She was going to carry out her revenge plot that night and no one, not even the old gods or new, would be able to stop her.

It wasn’t hard to keep up with him, considering the size and color of the pick up her drove. It was a bright white color and it wasn’t too hard to miss, especially in the dead on night. The Ghost Edition, was what it was called. Dany remembered when the truck company that Jon loved had announced the limited edition truck. It came with all the bells and whistles and Jon had wanted nothing more.

He wanted it so bad and with him and Dany being promoted in their respective fields of work, they could afford it. She had agreed to get if for him, so long she was able to get her Drogon Motorbike that she wanted for quite some time. She wasn’t surprised that he had agreed to that proposition and sometimes she believed that he loved that truck more than he loved her.

So the realization of him cheating on her should have surprised Dany as much as it did. She couldn’t ignore the fact that there were problems going on in their marriage. After four years, it seemed as if the fire that ignited them both had slowly gone out. They used to be in love with each other, but it seemed as if, over time, the love that was there was now lost. The first two years of their marriage had truly been a dream for Dany. They did everything together and couldn’t keep their hands off of each other. It wasn’t until they started trying for a baby that their relationship began to fracture. No matter how many times they tried, Dany just couldn’t get pregnant. There was a time that she did and just two months later they lost the babe. It was devastating for them both, but Dany had a harder time coping with her unborn child’s death.

After that whole ordeal, they agreed that it would be too dangerous and decided to stop trying all together. But Dany is stubborn and was raised not to quit, so unbeknownst to Jon, she went to every specialist she could to try to find out why she was unable to conceive. When she finally came across a doctor that was able to help her, she was elated. She couldn’t wait to tell Jon that there was a medication that she could take to help her conceive. They day she decided to tell him had been the day she found that message.

Aside from the one time after she found out about his infidelity, they hadn’t been intimate and she was beginning to feel an overwhelming feeling of emptiness sweep over her body. When she finally decided to take some revenge, she disclosed her plan to Arya and she quipped that Dany had gone mad. Perhaps she had, but Jon was the one who took her there.

When she arrived at the bar 30 minutes after Jon, she could see the white truck parked on the side of the building, away from any other cars. He intentionally parked it away so that no one had the opportunity to damage the precious exterior.

The location was perfect, but Dany feared that it was still too close to the building. She pulled out her set of keys and moved the truck by where the dumpsters were located, just across the parking lot. The seclusion and obscurity of the location wad perfect and she knew she wouldn’t have to worry about any prying eyes or ears.

It then that she began to take her revenge.

Every ounce of her feelings had gone into every blow, smash, and slash that she gave to his precious Ghost. She wanted him to feel the pain that he had caused her. She wanted him to feel his heart rip out of his chest, just like hers did. She went on for what seemed like hours; caught in a rage that she couldn’t escape.

After her rage had subsided, she inspected her work and gave a wicked smile. She took the slugger still in her hands and took one finale blow to the windshield, shattering it beyond repair. With a satisfied sigh, she began to walk towards the bar.

She hadn’t planned on actually entering the bar, but the thought of the look on Jon’s face when he saw her and his truck was too good to pass up. She sat herself on a stool and motioned for the bar tender to meet her.

“What can I get you?” he asked.

“Whiskey, dry.” She stated.

The bar tender nodded and filled a small glass with the copper substance.

She racked her eyes through the crowded bar until her gaze fell on her husband behind the red-headed woman with a pool stick, no doubt showing her how to shoot some sort of combo. She gave a crude laugh, remembering that he had used that same move on her when they first met.

He was completely oblivious to her; too preoccupied with the ginger in the leather dress to notice. Thirty minutes had passed and Dany sat there staring at the couple. She was enthralled at the way he interacted with her. His flirtatious manner and his easy go lucky laugh. Everything about him dripped ego and Dany couldn’t stand it much longer. She was about to go over that shove that damned pool stick up his ass, when a tall scraggy lad with long hair and a nametag spelling “Ed” walked in yelling, “Oi! Some poor bastard’s truck just got hammered. I think it’s a Ghost Edition, parked by the dumpsters.”

Dany could see Jon’s eyes widen in fear. He ran out the bar completely unaware of Dany’s presence. She gulped the remaining whiskey and followed him out, not wanting to miss his reaction. Jon’s cries could be heard across the parking lot. It was a mixture of frustration, anger, and sadness. Dany couldn’t help but laugh that the stupidity.

“You like my artwork? I think I did a pretty good job, don’t you agree?” She said as she came up behind him.

Jon jumped in surprise and turned to face his wife, his grey eye meeting her intense violet ones.

“Dany? You did this? Why in the seven hells would you do this? What are even doing here?” He was stumbling over his words, the nerves ever present. He was trying to make the pieces of the very large complicated puzzle fit into a space that was not meant for it.

“Don’t play dumb, Jon. We both know what going on.” Dany spat.

Jon’s face went pale, “Dany I-I…please let me explain.”

He went towards her to grab her hands into his, but she swiftly moved away.

“Don’t touch me! Don’t ever touch me again!”

“Dany, I-” Jon tried to speak, but Dany was faster.

“No! Don’t try to talk yourself out of this one, Jon! You fucked up when you decided to enjoy the company of woman that was not your wife. You must think me dumb. Tell me, was her cunt better than mine? Is that why you cheated? Or maybe it was because I couldn’t give you what you want. A family!” The tears were now streaming down her face and she was powerless to stop it.

“Dany, I’m sorry. But even you have to admit that our relationship isn’t what it used to be. I should have talked to you about it instead of going behind your back. But I mean, Gods, Dany! You didn’t could have talked to me about it too! You didn’t have to ruin my truck! My truck Dany!” Jon’s voice cracked every time he mentioned the truck behind him.

Dany was furious. She was bearing her heart and emotions to him and the only thing he could think about was the piece of junk behind him. She could feel the heat of her anger rise in her. It was like a dragon readying itself to blow its flames. She was going to burst at any moment, that is, until a voice from behind her broke her rage.

“What is going on? Jon, who is this?”

Dany turned to face the red headed Ygritte.

“Who am I!? I am his fucking wife!” She yelled in her face. She didn’t mean to yell at the girl, but she could no longer control the dragon inside of her. She noticed Ygritte’s eyes widen. It was look of shock and confusion.

“Wife!? You have a wife!? You told me she died in car crash!” Ygritte was now yelling at Jon.

Dany was now the one with confusion written on her face. She truly believed that this woman knew about Dany, she never expected to Jon to lie to both of them.

“Grittes, I can explain.” Jon stuttered.

Ygritte stalked towards Jon and punched him square in the jaw.

“I don’t want your explanation, you crow!” She spat at him as he clutched his face. She turned towards Dany and gave her the most apologetic look she had ever seen.

“I’m sorry, I truly didn’t know.”

Dany’s face burst into a wide grin. She gave one last look at her cheating husband and shrugged, “It’s okay, I guess I saved you the trouble. Want to grab a drink?”

Ygritte smiled, “That would be great.”

The two women left the blubbering man groveling on the ground and made their way to the bar.

#jon snow #daenerys targaryen #jon and daenerys #ygritte #cheating #modern au #got #fanfic #mention of arya #Arya Stark #Gendry Baratheon #only minor gendrya #jon x daenerys

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tlbodine · 5 years

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Every Single Last Thought I Have About Game of Thrones

My rambling obsession with Game of Thrones has cost me at least a dozen followers so far, and I promise it’s nearing an end now that the show is finished and the fervor is dying down. But I do have some Final Thoughts(tm), and I thought I would assemble them all here as best I can. In the interests of saving you all from a million future Game of Thrones posts, I will endeavor to put Every Single Thought I Have into one monstrously long GoT masterpost. You’re welcome, I guess?

Rambles under a spoiler tag, as much for actual spoilers as for, uh, rambling. Buckle in. This post is a monster.

In a contentiously-named Vice article called “Game of Thrones Was Doomed From the Start,” Peter Slattery makes a point that maybe we all needed to hear: Whatever our problems with the Game of Thrones TV show, they’re not wholly endemic to the show itself. The article is worth a read, but the tl;dr is this: GRRM created an astonishingly complex world with his book series, and the story has spun out to ever greater complexity as it approaches its supposed end.

Anyone looking for a way to wrap it all up is going to have a tough time. Just ask GRRM himself, whose inability to finish the series in a timely fashion has basically become a meme at this point.

Now, of course, D&D did not need to try to end the story in 6 episodes. They could easily have kept the series going on forever and HBO would have allowed it, because GoT is pretty much single-handedly keeping the network’s lights on at this point. Why the showrunners chose to turn down that opportunity is a matter of speculation.

What I will say is this: There had always been an expectation that the show would be seven seasons. The internet has a short memory about these things, but back when this all started, the intent was clear enough: There would be 7 books in the series, and 7 episodes in the show, one for each book. At the time, four of GRRM’s books were out, with the fifth being released during this time period, and there had been an expectation (even then, a bit over-optimistic) that the books would finish before their respective seasons, or maybe just trail it by a year or so.

The anticipation, in other words, was that A Song of Ice and Fire would roughly follow the trajectory of the Harry Potter films in their relationship with the books.

That’s not what happened, obviously.

But I do remember there being some grumblings of unease when we audience-folk started to realize the show might not wrap up tidily in those 7 planned seasons. And I definitely remember some grumbling about how Season 8 would take more than a year to come out (surely you all remember that impatience!)

And facing that -- a restless audience, source material that stayed stubbornly unwritten, the increasingly complex logistics of an enormous cast including young actors who were picking up other roles -- I can understand the impulse to speed it along. If your options in finishing a story are to rush it a bit to force the plot points out, or else risk being caught plodding forward indefinitely...I can see the appeal of rushing. I won’t say it was the right creative choice, but it’s one I can understand and one I don’t think is indefensible. I’m not in love with what happened, but I can think of far worse ways for the show to have gone.

Here’s more analysis on that which you may find interesting: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/21/18633029/game-of-thrones-got-ending-season-8-george-rr-martin-apology

Scope Creep & Themes that Get Away From You

So why is the ASOIAF universe so gosh-darn complex, and why are these books so hard to finish, and why is the show’s ending so hard to stick?

It’s not just because GRRM is pantsing his way through the story (excuse me, tending his garden) but because ASOIAF is not actually a story so much as it’s a history. Part of what makes this world so compelling is that it is indeed its own world. And not just in the Tolkien sense of multiple cultures and complex histories and languages fleshing out the world. What’s made GRRM’s work the most interesting and compelling from the beginning is that it promises even more than that: Here is a richly textured world of geopolitical intrigue, populated by real people; each and every character has their own fears and hopes and aspirations and petty squabbles.

ASOIAF tells a story about normal people and the way they get caught in the machinations of war, and it doesn’t take any shortcuts. And I think we need to take a moment here to appreciate how unique that actually is as a concept.

In Lord of the Rings, we receive a richly detailed world with its own history and culture and grand war, but the war is also limited by the parameters of the story: It can all be ended if Frodo destroys the ring.

GRRM did not give himself such a straightforward McGuffin for ending his story.

And that, indeed, is part of the appeal of the ASOIAF series. A big part of what makes it all so compelling is that it’s a deconstruction of the fantasy genre and, really, a deconstruction of epics in general.

Game of Thrones, the first book in the series, dares to ask: What happens when being the good guy is what gets you killed?

Maybe GoT has been part of our cultural fabric for so long that this doesn’t seem all that shocking, but let’s just take a moment to appreciate here how utterly wild it is that this story begins by spending hundreds of pages (or many hours of film) with a protagonist, only to lop his head off -- and that, really, the rest of the series isn’t even about avenging that death. Oh, sure, vengeance for Ned Stark colors the motivation of some characters, especially in the beginning...but the story soon spirals way beyond that, because the Starks are just one piece in the epic machines of war.

So by its very nature, ASOIAF is not just complex in terms of its sheer scope and number of characters and storylines, but also in terms of its themes. It’s a story that raises a number of difficult questions about the nature of good and evil, of the influence of power, the personal vs the political, and so forth.

These are difficult questions, the type of questions at the very core of the human experience, questions that we’ve been grappling with for thousands of years, and GoT’s deconstructive nature means that it can’t take shortcuts to answering them. The answers simply cannot be as satisfying as “good triumphs over evil” or “evil wins” because the very nature of ASOIAF is complexity and the rejection of such simple platitudes.

From that angle, I think the show did a brilliant job of wrapping things up. The plot had its share of inconsistencies (although not as many as people argue, more on that in a minute) but I think it stayed true to the spirit of what Game of Thrones had always been about. Season 8 raised some really important questions and touched on some extremely interesting themes, and I personally found it both thought-provoking and powerful.

But, well, I will confess that my aesthetics have always leaned more toward intricacy, and that I do not have what many would call “good taste” about a great many things. I always prefer for things to be interesting rather than beautiful, and from my perspective, the home stretch of Game of Thrones was exceedingly interesting.

How Did You Honestly Expect It Was Going To End?

For all of the belly-aching on social media about the ending of Game of Thrones, I have both a rebuttal and a genuine question: What did you think was going to happen?

A lot of people seemed to think that something like this would happen:

(art by https://www.instagram.com/raymondwaskita/?hl=en and no, this isn’t saying the artist believes or endorses any of this, just saying I saw this image on Facebook accompanied by a lot of wistful sighing)

I saw so many people who were all so very angry that Daenerys doesn’t walk away the winner of everything, that Cersei doesn’t get a more satisfying death, that Jon didn’t get to be the true king, that Jaime and Brienne don’t get a happily-ever-after, etc. etc. etc. And to all of those people I have just one question to ask you: What the fuck show have you been watching?

Daenerys deserved better?

Tell that to Ned Stark. Tell that to Robb and Catelyn and Shireen and Margaery and all the rest of the Tyrells. Just for starters. We could do this all day.

Just because we had a few bad guys get some deliciously just endings does not mean that the Game of Thrones universe is fair or that anyone gets what they deserve. That’s just silly.

But okay, fine then: Was it fucked up to tell a story where the breaker of chains and inspirational strong woman becomes the villain?

I mean, sure, maybe. But doing so allowed us to ask some other really interesting questions (and, as previously noted, I always prefer when things are interesting).

Is excessive force justified when it’s against evil men? Who gets to decide who is good and who is evil? How many losses are acceptable? Can you fight monsters without becoming a monster yourself? Should you be uncomfortable with how happy you are when “others” are slaughtered? Are you a little bit culpable too?

Was Dany’s heel-face turn perfectly executed? No. But it was believable, and it was powerful, and I think the questions it asks are good questions that deserve to be talked about.

Game of Thrones is all about subverting tropes, and Daenerys is the obvious Chosen One. She’s the one with the fantastic birth and the underdog story and the magical powers. She and Jon Snow are both the characters that every story tells us will be the heroes. So of course they don’t get what they “deserve.”

If the first episode of Game of Thrones asks, “What happens if being good doesn’t save the hero?” then the last episode asks, “What happens if being the hero doesn’t make you good?”

And that, to me, is interesting enough that it more than makes up for shortcomings in the road we traveled to get there.

A lot of the criticism of the show -- take, for just one of many examples, this: https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a27527950/game-of-thrones-finale-character-endings/ -- seems to fundamentally misunderstand what the show actually is or what it was attempting.

And like...I can understand being disappointed, but...like the scorpion & the frog...you knew what this show was when you picked it up.

Here’s a Twitter thread I really liked about this point: https://twitter.com/leighalexander/status/1130750999684161537

So Am I Just Some D&D Apologist Who Loves Everything About This Show?

I’m so glad you asked, hypothetical reader!

No. No, I am not in love with every creative decision made by the GoT showrunners. There are plenty of things I disliked about the show and its creative choices.

Re-framing Daenerys and Khal Drogo’s sex as rape, and then making the same mistake later when Jaime and Cersei have sex after Joffrey’s death.

Giving Sansa to Ramsay Bolton. Not only do we get more unnecessary rape plots (and, honestly, wasn’t there enough rape in the source material?) but it just is so much less interesting than what was happening with Book!Sansa, who is my favorite character (and was my favorite long before it became cool to love Sansa).

The entire three-eyed raven arc and “hold the door.” I mean, it was cool and tense, but I never got a really good idea of wtf the three-eyed raven’s powers actually do and what Bran inherited, and I kind of got the feeling that the showrunners didn’t understand it either and thus skirted around it. (Overall the show seemed uncomfortable with its more fantastic elements and knowing what to do with them).

I thought Rickon was a wasted opportunity of a character. I wanted to see him do something cool. I admit that this is based entirely on my pet theory that the direwolves represent the souls of the Stark children, and I hoped Shaggydog’s vicious nature meant that Rickon was going to become a badass somehow. Alas. (I am also deeply sad that Arya and Nymeria don’t reunite to go fuck some shit up together)

Euron Greyjoy was a disaster. He is so much more interesting in the books, and so much weirder, and he’s just so pointless and annoying in the show by comparison.

I didn’t like the “let’s go beyond the wall and oops there went my dragon” storyline very much, and honestly at no point did I ever really believe Jon and Dany’s relationship because it was rushed and the actors have zero chemistry.

So no, I don’t think the showrunners made a perfect TV show. But I do think it’s deeply unfair to say that they are incompetent writers or that they can’t work without the original source material.

My Criticism of the Criticisms

The internet is full of idiotic opinions, and I could be here all day if I addressed all of them (I’ve already been working on this for two hours) but I will address a few of the complaints I’ve seen that have most rankled me.

“Daenerys goes crazy because a boy rejected her”

I think calling Daenerys the “mad queen” and writing off Targaryen madness as A Real Thing That Definitely Exists And Is Not At All A Metaphor For Power And Entitlement is silly and reductivist. Yes, generations of inbreeding have probably unsettled the Targaryens a bit. But Dany didn’t just go crazy. As I’ve said before: She was already prepared to sacrifice the lives of the commoners on King’s Landing. She knew that Cersei would use them as a human shield and Dany wasn’t going to let that stop her. She had endured so much on her journey to get to this point, and nothing was going to stand between her and the Iron Throne. I talk about this in great length in another post so I won’t get into it here, but just...don’t be stupid.

“Cersei’s ending was stupid and pointless”

I’ve spent so much time dissecting Daenerys that I haven’t had a chance to talk about Cersei, which is a shame because I love her character a lot. I really loved her ending. All this time, the only thing she wanted was the security that power would bring her. Watching the look on her face when she realizes that Daenerys is going to destroy everything and that no political maneuvering can save her -- it was really powerful acting, and a major moment of change for her character. That she dies in Jaime’s arms, admitting at last that she is frightened, that she doesn’t want to die, that she doesn’t want her baby to die -- not only is it heartbreaking, but it’s honest. That is Cersei laid bare. She is who she has always been. That encapsulates her arc in a way that no other death really could have, and I personally found it a lot more satisfying than if Arya or whomever had just stabbed her in the back.

“All of Jaime’s character development just went out the window”

I’ll give you some of this. I don’t know that the show has ever fully understood Jaime. Just as Cersei is so much more sympathetic in the show, Jaime is much more sympathetic in the books. But I don’t think that all his character development is for nothing. I think we still have his journey, no matter what. And in the end, I can understand why he chose to leave Brienne. He didn’t think he deserved that happiness, for one; Brienne was too good for him, not just as a person but as a knight, and he knew that. And what was his long-term plan, anyway? Daenerys certainly wasn’t overly fond of him. There’s a non-zero chance she might have executed him for killing her father once he’s outlived his usefulness. Cersei and his unborn child were in the path of danger. He had a chance to maybe go rescue them and save the family, somehow, as he’d so horribly failed to save any of his other children. It was a stupid choice, but Jaime is the dumbest Lannister, and his self-loathing go deep. Did we think that Brienne’s redemptive vagina was going to save him from himself? Come on.

As for his last moments with Cersei...well. He was already mortally wounded by Euron. And I loved that the fight was so inglorious, so raw and dirty and stupid. They wrestle in the mud and it was perfect, as far as I’m concerned. So Jaime knows he won’t get out of this alive, and here’s Cersei, frightened and vulnerable. What else CAN he do but try to comfort them both? I thought it was a beautiful end for both of them and just because Jaime’s story ended up being tragic doesn’t invalidate his redemption arc. (I mean, for fuck sake, how many people go through rehab just to die of an overdose when they backslide?)

“The scorpions are deadly weapons except then they’re useless”

Okay like. This is annoying to me. By the time we see Rhaegal, he has suffered a lot of damage courtesy of the white walkers. His wing has a big freaking hole in it. He’s not 100%, and he’s not being ridden by anyone, and the attack comes as an ambush. Drogon evades being shot down because he’s being steered by a rider and he’s not injured and exhausted.

“D&D are incompetent writers who have no idea what they’re doing”

This one just makes me mad, and not just because of the fandom entitlement that I hate so much. (in this house, we stan for creators). Look. If they’re so incompetent, how did they manage to make a show that y’all loved for seven seasons previous to this? Also, like it or not, they know exactly what they’re doing. Like, they had such a clear idea of what they were doing that they managed to foresee the exact counter-arguments that fans would have and directly address them in the show.

Like. Hot damn. I will admit: I was very nervous about this season in the first few episodes. Dany was making me uneasy. She was acting selfish and entitled, and her attitude toward the war was making me uncomfortable -- because she was still in the role of hero, and I wasn’t sure if we-the-audience were meant to just swallow this as being OK. And then Varys and Tyrion have a conversation about exactly that, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Because that made it clear that the show knew what it was doing.

And then later? Jon and Tyrion have a so-accurate-its-painful discussion about Dany’s heel-face turn and her potential motives, and it so perfectly mirrored the discussions on Twitter the week prior that I almost wondered if they’d snuck off to film it last minute.

The point is: Like it or not, D&D knew exactly what they were doing. And, remember, GRRM gave them an outline, and while we don’t know for sure what’s their invention and what’s his, I think we can safely say that the broad strokes of the ending were GRRM’s invention, not theirs. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/game-thrones-showrunners-know-how-687589

So love it or hate it, the ending of GoT cannot be blamed on incompetence.

Okay Fine But the Pacing Was Still Really Bad

Yep. I’ll grant you that.

The ending blazes through plot points at breakneck speed. A lot of really important character development is left to performances; we’re forced to infer, as the audience, what a character is thinking or feeling at any given time. A lot of really important plot information is delivered by way of single dialogue lines. There’s a lot of “if you blink you’ll miss it” storytelling.

It’s not ideal by any means.

But it’s still pretty fucking good. The performances are good enough that, to me anyway, it’s pretty easy to intuit what’s going on internally. And the show still gave me things to think about, and made me feel things, and the impact may actually have been stronger by virtue of leaving so much to the imagination. By leaving a lot of questions unanswered, the show invites conversation and thought and speculation, and I think that’s valuable.

Would I Have Done It Differently?

Here’s a fun relic from history -- check out GRRM’s original story pitch, back when he thought this would be a trilogy: https://www.insider.com/game-of-thrones-original-story-2017-8

Talk about scope creep.

It’s fascinating, though. I know myself all too well that the book I set out to write and the book I end up with are never the same. There are some really interesting ideas in here, but I think the story we ended up with is a lot better.

But as for the ending of the Game of Thrones. Was it perfect? Would I have handled it differently?

Thematically, I think the resolution is mostly fine. Putting Bran on the throne is...well, it’s a choice. I have a little bit of a hard time with it just because it’s not really clear what Bran is, exactly. What are the scope of his powers? Is it a bit of a cop-out to put a supernatural king on the throne?

But what I do like about it is the idea that it doesn’t actually really matter who we put on the throne. The story makes a difference -- we need something that makes for a good song, because maybe at the end of the day one of the messages is that we need to believe in all these tropes we’ve deconstructed because reality is hard, it’s painful and boring and often nonsensical, and maybe we need stories in order to survive.

But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who we put in charge, because the people who are actually in charge are the council, and they will deal with everything the way they always had. After years of bloody rebellion, maybe the best thing really is the status quo. Maybe the solution to the game of thrones is to just stop fucking playing it. Put somebody on the damn throne and get back to running the country. I like that a lot.

I also like the idea that change is important, and it’s possible, but it’s slow. That strikes a good balance of realism and optimism. No, we’re not bringing democracy to Westeros, but we’re establishing the roots of a Republic. No, a queen doesn’t sit the Iron Throne, but a queen does get to rule in the north, and the north gets its sovereignty. No, Jon Snow doesn’t get to be the hero, but he does get to go beyond the wall with the Freefolk, which honestly will probably make him happier than anything else (and while he doesn’t get to claim his birthright, he does know now why Ned did what he did, and gets some closure on the daddy issues front).

All in all, it’s good. It’s not a happy ending, but we were never going to get a happy ending. And it’s not a particularly dramatic ending, because we weren’t going to get one of those either.

THAT SAID. I will say there are a few things that really bothered me about the way the finale plays out.

Drogon spontaneously melting down the throne for....some reason? Uh? I mean thematically it’s great but like....why though?

It would have made more sense if the dragon roasted Jon, except Jon doesn’t burn because fire can’t burn a dragon, but the throne behind Jon melts down. It also would have made sense of Jon hopped on the dragon and melted down the throne himself, and maybe went and either killed Dany’s force or made them surrender/yield to him.

I also have a hard time believing that the Unsullied who were just executing Lannisters would have locked Jon up instead of executing him immediately for treason.

And wtf have they all been doing after Dany died? OK, fine, maybe the Unsullied don’t have any ambitions of their own, but you’re telling me the Dothraki were like “oh, ok, queen’s dead, guess we’ll just hang out and not do anything then?”

None of that made any sense to me.

Also wtf how are there still so many Dothraki and Unsullied left? Didn’t, like, a whole lot of them die fighting zombies?

Ugh.

Anyway.

Perfect? No. Thought-provoking? Absolutely. Thematically on-point? Yeah, I’d say so. One of the best shows on television, still? Definitely. Are there valid criticisms? Yes. Are most of the criticisms valid? Not by a long shot.

One final thought:

We never do learn why the Night King doesn’t burn. Our pet theory in the house (courtesy of my husband) is that he is of Targaryen descent. He can ride the dragon, after all. What if that’s not just because he resurrects it with his powers, but because he is himself a dragon-rider?

So with that as a possibility...Well. I’m just saying.

We don’t know where Drogon took Daenerys after she dies. But wouldn’t it be interesting if she is somehow resurrected, and somehow gets to spend the next few centuries amassing an army of the undead to come back and take what’s rightfully hers, effectively re-starting the cycle and bringing winter back once again?

(this is what happens when you give a fantasy series to a horror writer)

#got spoilers #game of thrones #writing advice #rambles #thoughts #long post #analysis #this is going to get like five notes #and that will make me very sad #but here it is #here are all of my thoughts #everything that's been swirling in my brain for weeks #please enjoy

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