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dappercritter · 3 years ago

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Godzilla vs Kong: Brutally Honest Thoughts

(Took me long enough, eh? Depending on home video releases be like that.)

So first things first, I have a confession to make: I spoiled the movie before I watched it. I was impatient and they had only announced an HBO Max premiere in the states and a theatrical run in Canada at the time. Afterward, I got heads-up from a friend and immersed myself in the opinions of those lucky enough to see it early. I’m just saying that I have some preconceived opinions that I’m sticking to.

That said, Godzilla vs Kong turned out to be more fun than I expected! But you already knew that. Everyone did. The two kings of movie monsters had their rematch and this time it was with glorious Hollywood SFX powering it this time.

The human story was fun but it’s clear they stopped trying at this point. Team Kong stole my heart, especially Jia. Team Godzilla (although the Conspiracy Crew would be a more fitting term since they spend more time chasing down mysteries than trying to back or understand Godzilla) was more fun than I expected and their dynamic was surprisingly enjoyable. Bernie is actually kind of funny, it's nice to see Madison acting more assertive, and Josh was fine--he was the only sane man of the bunch but he was also the butt of the jokes. Still, all the hardcore conspiracy jokes got old fast and it feels off seeing the daughter of two scientists turn into an edgy conspiracy crackpot. Why not an edgy science major?

Team Apex are fun villains, especially Walter Simmons who's a great megalomaniacal CEO type, but Ren Serizawa is a joke. I like his actor's performance but he's just another footnote. Nobody bats an eye at his last name, although the only heroes he interacts with are Nathan Lind and he just misses Team Godzilla. He really could have just been any other villain, but instead, they had to sully Serizawa’s legacy further while robbing a good actor of some interesting material. (As is, it turns out he was just an egotistical jerk with daddy issues--an easy puzzle to solve on day one--after all...)

However, I still cannot and will not approve of the fact that somebody thought it would be a good idea to make the heroes of a sci-fi story into hardcore conspiracy theorists in this day and age. Likewise, I’m not a huge fan of how they essentially made the Hollow Earth into its own universe complete with a crazy portal and an environment with its own laws of physics, nor am I totally crazy about the huge leap in technology that was made between this and KOTM, or G’14 for that matter.

The monsters as awesome as they are, are the biggest mixed bag in the show.

Kong is at his best in ages, and while I am all for the new heroic warrior character that Legendary have crafted and I acknowledge that making him a worthy opponent for their god-tier Godzilla was going to be a hurdle, I think they did a splendid job. Seeing Kong using agility and acrobatics was a glorious sight to behold, and something about Kong becoming a tool-user and weapon wielder just feels right. It’s a far better demonstration of Kong as a “thinking animal” (*wink, wink*).

I’m much less thrilled about their treatment of his greatest opponent ever. After everything they’ve done to build up Godzilla as the incredible force of neutral good fighting to maintain balance and all the build up to ancient rivalry debating back to a great Titan war--even going as far as putting his name in front Kong’s this time!-- they’ve reduced Godzilla back to glorified bully for Kong. He only gets the minimum amount of sympathy from the cast of his movie before they go off to deal with the conspiracy plot or focus on Kong and the Hollow Earth. Worse still, he is somehow more powerful and more aggressive than ever for a good chunk of the movie which leads to an outcome I’m sorry to say we all saw coming. Somehow, I suspect that the reason behind this was how Wingard cited Godzilla vs. Mothra, vs. Destoryah, and Shin-Godzilla as influences for the monsters scale and story, which while cool and all, are all movies where he was played up as a mostly stoic antagonist rather than a three-dimensional character like Kong. (Though ironically vs. Destoroyah and Shin did a better job of making Godzilla feel more sympathetic and in both of them he was a walking nuclear reactor meltdown.)

Due to the unfortunate time constraints of the three-way deal between Toho, WB, and Universal at the time this was in production, Kong was unable to secure a proper sequel that could develop his skillset like Godzilla’s did. Nevermind the fact the filmmakers completely surrendered to the “nothing matters but the monsters” mentality that a chunk of the fanbase has been spouting since this universe unofficially kicked off almost 10 years ago. (Sidenote: Oh god, I’m turning in an old fart already.) As a result, the movie trips over itself trying to set up Godzilla and Kong’s rivalry as well as building up Kong as a worthy opponent to Godzilla while expanding on their shared lore, and as a result countless plot points set up in in the previous movie and tie-in movie are thrown out the window. I’m sorry to say but in spite of all hopes and illusions of grandeur, it’s safe to this damn thing is a Kong movie with Godzilla as the bad guy.

...at least until HE shows up. Yup, Mechagodzilla. The biggest spoiled twist of the centuries steals the show so the movie can pull a Dawn of Justice. But! It does it much better than the fractured DCEU’s most controversial entry ever could. Mechagodzilla’s inclusion gets a decent amount of build up thanks to Team Godzilla/the Conspiracy Crew, and when he shows up, does he make an impression! At first, I wasn’t sure how to feel about his inclusion or his design, but I’ve come to like this one. He’s basically a kaiju terminator built in Godzilla’s image made purely out of heavy machinery piloted by the best Ghidorah head. It’s a jarring change of pace compared to previous MechaG’s but it grows on you after a while. With the abundance of weaponry stuffed into him, he feels like a fitting update of the original killing machine, and even if his inclusion feels like an easy way out of the big showdown, it’s fun to see him played as a literal colossal heel for the kings to team up against. Not to mention he looks shockingly good with those red highlights. However, one still can’t help but wonder how and why he was made in this universe, or how he feels like pure heavy machinery one minute and then an extra-large Ultron unit the next.

As for the the big throwdowns we’ve all been waiting for... well, we’re still in the mixed bag deparment. While the fights are all exciting and excellently choreographed, and benefit from some more eclectic lighting and cinematograph, I’m sorry to say that as far as the rematch of the century goes they dropped the ball on this one.

Don’t get me wrong, the fights are all great in their own ways, but there’s a drastic change in the feeling of weight and power with the monsters. Godzilla, Kong, and even Mechagodzilla all feel strangely floaty in most of their fights. One moments they feel like true behemoths shaking the very earth with every movement and then it’s like they’re in Godzilla Unleashed, running, jumping, and throwing each other around with speed that feels that almost makes you wonder if the Hollow Earth’s gravity inversion stuff is leaking out into the world. While it’s all perfectly cool, you can’t help but wonder how Kong is able to leap between aircraft carriers and buildings, when Godzilla got the ability to blow a hole through the Earth itself, or how a colossal machine is able to move so nimbly or why it has to be flashing blue all the time.

It’s fascinating and fun but you just can’t help but wonder how we got from almost posthuman disaster and war movies exploring how we’re at the mercy of the ancient almost mythical forces beyond our comprehension, we’ve found ourselves smack dab in the middle of Bayformers meets Jurassic World levels of Hollywood absurdity where anything and everything can and will happen in the name of getting to the monster fights. Although I can’t say I’m surprised given the director’s take on Death Note made some questionable choices with it’s take on the infamous cast while still coming up with some genuinely inspired choices. Still, all things considered we could have gotten worse compared to ther cinematic universes made by WB and Universal.

As for some misc. thoughts to close up this rambling mess:

-The soundtrack is fantastic. A great continuation of the feel of Skull Island’s mixtape with some truly wonderful picks. Special mention goes to the opening and ending songs, and they GOT AN ELVIS PRESLEY SONG IN HERE! YES!!! The three kings of pop culture together at last!

-While this movie didn’t need to be any more overstuffed, it would have been nice if the rest of the Titans didn’t disappear entirely from this movie. I get that Godzilla: Dominion already explained what happened to them all more or less, but it really is a missed oppurtunity that we never got to see another Titan war. Or Rodan attacking Kong to avenge his pterosaur bretheren from days long past. Speaking of which...

-“Save Mothra” jokes be damned, Mothra would have been a welcome gues star, not just to help break up the big fight, but to show off Godzilla’s softer, more protective side. And yes, I want more Mothzilla. Shut up, we deserve it.

-Boy, Monarch sure does a whole lot of nothing up-top, huh?

-The cinematography is a great update but there’s a little too much neon lighting, especially in the Apex HQ and the Hollow Earth throne room. It feels like they’re trying just a little too hard to sell the more futuristic, Hollywood sci-fi feel.

-The score is... great but not that great. Of course, I’ve always had mixed feelings about Tom Holkenburg (AKA Junkie XL)’s music. I liked Kong’s themes, but they REALLY dropped the ball with Godzilla’s theme. Mechagodzilla’s works really well as long you ignore that it’s just Godzilla’s theme in this movie with an ominious choir added in.

-The new Hollow Earth creatures are all perfectly fine. Actually, I thought they were another highlight! Especially the Warbats, Hellhawks, and Doug the Titanus Foetodon Man.

-I want to do a release the extended cut campaign but I don’t think any of us have the energy for that s**t anymore.

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nomanwalksalone · 4 years ago

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PIECES OF SELF

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

On a tip from the Instagram stories of my friend Paul Fournier, I picked up Nishiguchi Essentials 100, a bilingual compendium of the 100 articles of clothing and accessories that totemically compose the intrepid Shuhei Nishiguchi, the photogenic men’s fashion director of Japan’s directional department store, Beams. It is the sort of thing I love, a diverse collection of objects, each with their own particular stories and their own particular uniqueness. It reminded me of my old favorite Einstein’s Watch, which juxtaposed the most interesting items put up for sale in 2009 (from Einstein’s own Swiss watch to a Barbie version of the DC comics superhero Black Canary). It also put me in mind of Taryn Simon’s An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, out of whose catalog of hymen restoration clinics, corpse farms and Braille editions of Playboy rose a strange, yet familiarly offbeat, Americana.

Nishiguchi-san has been a stalwart of the hashtag-menswear scene for years, a fixture at the Pitti Uomo trade fairs (which he attends in a professional, rather than parasocial, capacity), and a popular enough phenomenon that menswear blogger Simon Crompton marketed a previous book of his, Nishiguchi’s Closet, which purported to show readers how to use just ten articles of clothing to create a hundred different outfits.

As its title suggests, Nishiguchi Essentials 100 features ten times the pieces of clothing as that earlier book, for a very different philosophy of dress. Why, at least three different raincoats are Essentials. Rather than pretend to any minimal rigor, or to the particular multifarious use of basics, the very number of these Essentials seems to beggar the meaning of the word. At last, a clothing book that does not lie about practicality, but instead exults in an overwhelming plenty of carefully sourced vintage trenchcoats, one-off briefcases specially created for him by a firm that specializes in gun cases, patinated prototype suede blazers, 1950s French army pants and… buffalo skin cowboy boots.

As the above list suggests, Nishiguchi is a polyvalent dresser not captive to any particular menswear style. His choices of Essentials is not just diverse, it is variegated like the motley plumage of an exotic bird. While his choice of vintage Brooks Brothers button-down-collar shirts would delight a Trad, his taste for vintage Ralph Lauren (a certain 1990s trenchcoat, baggy 1990s Polo trousers, and old American-made Polo oxford-cloth shirts) would put them off. The ‘Lo-Heads who might be impressed by those would be nonplussed by Nishiguchi’s 1980s Metallica T-shirts, French berets, or Hermès silver bangle hand-beaten by Touareg tribesmen like a Paul Bowles character. And each Essential has its own story: a tale of how each item had a connection to a person from his life, or how it is special in every detail, in ways the casual reader or consumer could not have imagined.

For every item in Nishiguchi Essentials 100 is special, and not just by its significance to its owner: even the Levi’s 501s Nishiguchi includes are specifically those from the 1950s to the 1990s, when Levi’s ceased making them in the United States. His Aquascutum trenchcoat was not one of its usual English production, but a version made in Canada for the North American market with natural shoulders. His handkerchieves are no ordinary bits of limp chambray, but by the infamous Simonnot-Godard, and came not only from Florence’s hallowed haberdashery Tie Your Tie, but from Tie Your Tie back before it changed ownership and, by implication, became just a bit more… well-known? Accessible? Viable? The implication is that experiences unavailable in the current day made many Essentials more precious, more covetable.

Even in purported catalogs like the other books I list above, a certain ghostly narrative detaches itself from the pretty (or unsettling) pictures and makes its presence felt. Nishiguchi is more explicit, writing even before his table of contents that he has “carefully selected” 100 items from his wardrobe that he cherishes and that are “indispensable” to his style and way of life… indissociable, it seems, from his sense of identity. Each item and its story seem like infinitesimally thin sample slices of self, specimens for us to pore over as if through a scanning microscope, and over a hundred of them to piece together a sense of Nishiguchi-san.

The recent pandemic, NIshiguchi-san writes, triggered a meditation that led to this book, In a way, it has catalyzed a sort of behavior of which Nishiguchi Essentials 100 is only the most brilliant version: the exhibition of self through visual and temporal fillets, consumerist fillets, pieces of self that each have their own narrative in our new world of social encounters, that of the distanced virtual interaction of Instagram and its ilk where so many of us have taken to including bits and pieces of what we wish to exhibit of our stuff… our latest kops, our latest drinks, talismans and fetish objects that have latterly become proxies, in our safety-minded physical stasis, for personality and identity.

How often have I thought, in recent months, of this exercise, this attempt to assert identity to faraway acquaintances (while we go bonkers with strain in our own real abodes), as a bit of body horror straight our of a Cronenberg film, our virtual attempts to maintain some sense of identity as we feel our real lives fall apart, like Brundle-Fly carefully, obscenely, gathering and storing the human pieces of him that fall off… What we store, what we catalog, what we display sometimes no longer aligns with who we actually are, and we have less control over the latter. What a fun exercise it would be, being able to show and write about the hundred or so things that we think compose us, or how we wish to be seen. But the Nishiguchi’s Essentials are actual talismans of his life, lifestyle and daily dress. This display is indeed inherent of him, for he actually is a fashion director for a famously eclectic luxury store, and a fashion icon, unlike most of the rest of us whose Instagram displays, whether self-conscious and ironical or not, are manifestations of aspiration, even if the act of display, the construction of images of our drinks, accessories, kops, and so on, can in effort feel like we are indeed parting with a piece of ourselves. As we are not Nishiguchi-san, let us pause to think about what remains, inside us, as well.

#rjman #reginaldjeromedemans #features #bookreviews

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buckyscrystalqueen · 4 years ago

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Too Smart for Your Own Good: Part 6

Pairings: (Past) Machine Gun Kelly x Reader, (Past and Future) Henry Cavill x Reader

Warnings: Swearing, PTSD, nightmare, abandonment, dick move on Henry’s part.

Word Count: 6,068

A/N: Doesn’t have a completed end yet, but just giving you more content to try to get myself out of a writing funk.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first night you were back in LA was the first night Henry really slept, but it was at a great cost. You were sound asleep in his arms, when his grip tightened painfully around your chest, but thankfully not around your stomach. You tried calling out his name softly to pull him from his nightmare, but all that managed to do was make him grab ahold of your wrist when you tried to move it to shake him awake.

“Siri, call Dad on speaker.” You said as evenly as you could, as you tried to keep the panic and pain out of your tone. When he grumbled through the speaker, you took as deep of a breath as you were physically capable of to seek his help. “Daddy, I need you to calmly, and quietly come to my room to help me. Henry’s having a nightmare and I can’t get out of his grip to help. But you have to be calm.” You finished quickly when you heard him rush out of bed. “Calm, Negan. Please, for your granddaughter’s sake.”

“OK.” He growled angrily before hanging up the phone a few moments before he pushed open your bedroom door. “What do you need?”

“Get on the bed behind him.” You strained as you shifted your body weight as much as you could to try to pin the arm that was under you to the mattress. “Then lean over him and lay across his upper arm as best as you can. Then grab both of his wrists, gently, but firmly, and hold them. Just be careful of where your elbow is and the baby.”

“Why...?”

“Because I don’t know how he’s going to react to waking him up out of this.” You hissed over Henry’s grumbling. “Just do it.” With a heavy sigh, your father climbed onto your bed and followed your instructions to a t. You glanced up at him as best as you could to see his nod, took a deep breath, and shouted your fiancé’s name. As you expected, his grip tightened the slightest bit in fear, but Negan held on to his wrists so his grip couldn’t tighten any more than that. The next move he made as was expected as to get his arms free to fight back, but with you and Negan placed the way you were, he wasn’t able to get far with that either.

“Henry.” You said evenly and calmly around the knot in your throat. “Henry, you’re OK. You’re home, and you’re safe. It’s (Y/N) and Negan. You’re safe.” You kept repeating yourself for a few more moments until the fight in him completely disappeared, and was replaced with a new kind of panic.

“What did I do?” He asked, fearfully as your dad slowly sat up and let go of his wrists. “What did I do?!”

“You’re OK.” You repeated like a broken record as Negan flipped on your bedroom light for you. “You were having a nightmare and you tensed up around me. Dad just came into help...”

“Did I hurt you?” He asked quickly as he instantly let you go, sat up, and pushed himself across the bed to put as much distance between you as he could. “Did I hurt the baby?!”

“No, you didn’t.” You said as you ran your fingers through your hair and sat up against the head board. “I’m fine, and she’s fine. You weren’t near my stomach...”

“Oh Jesus Christ.” He gasped as he covered his face with his hands for a moment, only to look back at you. “I’m sorry. My love, I am so sorry.”

“It’s OK.” You repeated as you reached out and carefully touched his knee. “We’re all OK...”

“Need me anymore, Princess?” Negan asked as he got off the bed, knowing that if you were truly scared, you would say so.

“We’re OK for now.” You told him as you searched his tired eyes. “Thank you, Daddy. Sorry I woke you.”

“Any time.” He said, seriously. “I’ll leave my phone on.” You thanked him once more as he headed out of your room to smoke a cigarette or two before going back to bed, and you turned your full attention back to your fiancé.

“You didn’t hurt me, Henry.’ You repeated as you scooted closer to him and very gently picked up his hand. “Feel for yourself. Your arms were here... and here.” He nodded his head and gently traced the path on your skin, feeling for any broken bones, or tender spots you may have had. “You were no where near the baby, who is still squirming away.”

“(Y/N), I’m so sorry.”

“Baby, it’s OK, I promise.” You repeated as you reached up to touch his cheek slowly. “The only reason I called my dad was because I didn’t know how you’d react waking up suddenly like that, and I’m a bitty thing compared to you. I’m not strong enough to hold you still, but Negan is. So I called in reinforcements, but only because I’m pregnant.”

“Goddamnit.” He gasped as he started to tear up. “Darling...”

“Henry, take a deep breath for me.” You interrupted as you scooted a little bit closer. “I’m OK. We’re OK. I’m not mad, and I’m not scared, just a bit shaken. But here’s what we do know. You’re going to have nightmares. And now, knowing that, we can prepare ourselves for them better. There’s so many things we can try...”

“Like me sleeping in a whole different bed.” He interrupted as he reached out for his pillow, but you put your hand on it before he could pull it away.

“Henry, we have the biggest bed known to man kind.” You giggled. “You’re not going somewhere else. So let’s run through my ideas before we even consider that as a step, OK?” You kept your hand where it was and waited for him to nod, before getting out of bed and pulling open the curtains that lined the glass doors that lined your room. “Free white noise machine.” You told him as you held the buttons that pulled open the doors the same way it did in your living room and most of the west facing rooms in your house. “And lavender essential oils help. We can try weighted blankets, or look into a service dog. We can try journaling or we can start doing nightly meditation before bed.”

“I need to go see someone.” He said as he watched you tie up the curtains to see if you were in pain at all and trying to hide it. “Don’t I?”

“That’s an option, too.” You said with a nod as you came back to bed. “But all of those things need to be exhausted before we consider sleeping in different rooms, because we both know neither of us want that. And you can’t try to keep yourself awake to avoid this, Henry. You’ll only make it worse, you hear me?” He nodded his head and kept watching your face as you laid down on your side and scooted closer to the middle. “So let’s try this for now. We sleep in the middle, with a little space because I know that’s what will make you the most comfortable, and simply hold hands. You can get as close, or as far as you need, but I need to know you’re in bed with me, too. I need you here...”

“OK.” He sighed, hating the idea of possibly hurting you again, but hating the idea of sleeping without you even more. You gave him a reassuring smile as he got back in under the blankets and let you take his hand to hold.

“See?” You asked when he stiffly found an only partially comfortable way to lay, while you turned off the room light. “Not ideal, but it’s what you need for now. And I get that. Just listen to the waves, and focus on just my thumb. Feel it on the side of yours?” He nodded as he searched your eyes in your darkened room.

“Good. Focus on that. I know we’re both going to be up worrying about the other person for the rest of the night, so if you want to talk, I’m here. And if you don’t, I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere... well, other than the bathroom real quick.” You giggled as you pulled back to run over to your ensuite. “But that’s your daughter’s fault, not mine.” You were only gone a few moments, but when you came back, Henry had scooted even farther back from your spot, causing you to smirk. “You know, I can scoot across this bed, too, mister.”

“You should...”

“I’m not going anywhere, Henry.” You reminded him evenly as you grabbed your body pillow out from under your bed and laid back down in front of him, just far enough away that you couldn’t touch him with your toes without stretching, but so you could still reach his hands. You set up the pillow to make yourself more comfortable, and you could almost see relief on his face at the sight of the cotton blockade. “Yes, I can use this every night.” You answered to his unasked question. “Puts less of a strain on my back when I can’t rest her on your hip anyways.”

“OK.” He whispered as he daringly scooted a half inch closer to you.

“I love you, Henry.” You said softly as you laced your fingers with his and started rubbing his thumb again. “And I’m not mad or scared of you, do you hear me? We are going to get through this together.” He barely nodded in agreement as tears welled in his eyes, which he quickly closed to hide them.

“I love you, too, (Y/N).”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While Henry went to his first appointment with a PTSD therapist, you agreed to go shopping for maternity clothes. It was one thing that you hadn’t wanted to accept, but it was undeniable- your old clothes could no longer stretch to fit your 18 week along bump, and you could only live in bathing suits, and unbuttoned, held closed by hair ties jeans and shorts for so long, anyways. So Henry made you a deal as he tried to close your jeans under your stomach that morning. He’d go to the therapy appointment he’d been indecisive about, if you caved and bought pants that fit. Which meant you both left the house with scowls on your faces, even though yours was for a different reason.

You had barely paid for two smoothies at a place you had never been to before, that was a purposeful choice on your behalf, when your purse started to vibrate under your arm like you were expecting it to. Your heart still skipped a beat as you looked at an old caller ID photo, and answered the call with a small, knowing smirk.

“Baby? You OK?”

“I’m fine…” He said quickly. “I’m sorry… I lied to you.”

“You lied to me?” You asked as you pulled out a pair of reusable straws because you hated the paper ones that a lot of places in LA used now. “How did you lie to me?”

“I was told to tell you that this doctor wanted to do a family consult the first visit. And now, he won’t see me until my family gets here. Which means you…” A small smile pulled at the corner of your lips as you grabbed the two smoothies you had ordered, and nodded at the woman who made them.

“See, now… I vaguely remember a distant conversation…”

“I know.” Henry laughed as you opened the door of your car and set the drinks in the cupholders.

“Could it have been yesterday? No, maybe last week some time…”

“You know as well as I do…”

“Where I asked you if I should be there like my research showed.” You finished over him as you turned on your car, and checked your surroundings to back out of your spot. “You should be glad I still don’t listen to you.”

“I’m sorry, my love.”

“And you should be really lucky I picked the smoothie place that was two blocks away from where your appointment is on purpose, because I knew that no matter how much you swore he never said that…”

“I’m never going to live this down…” Henry said to you and someone in the office. “Never…”

“I hope you still like strawberry, blueberry, and kiwi.” You said as you grabbed a spot next to his Charger and hung up the phone. You grabbed your belongings and headed inside right on time for the therapy appointment, like you had planned since he had made the appointment.

“You are something special.” Henry said as he stood up to kiss your cheek.

“You’ve obviously forgotten who I am, baby.” You laughed as you glanced at the door that was opening to let a patient out.

“You must be Henry.” The man that stayed in the doorway asked with a smile as he took a clip board with Henry’s paperwork from the woman at the desk. “And…”

“(Y/N).” You said as you handed Henry his smoothie so you could shake the therapist’s hand. “Fiancée.”

“Come on back.”

“This why you left before me?” Henry asked as he gently pushed you forward.

“It is.”

“Well thank you for that.”

“OK.” The doctor said as he closed the door behind you in his office. “I’m Doctor Maxwell. Let’s get started…”

——

“So how did you know?” Henry asked as you headed back to get some shopping for both of you done after dropping off his car after his appointment.

“You can’t look at me when you lie to me.” You told him as you reached across the middle console of your Range Rover to rest your hand on his thigh while he drove. “You never have been able to. You always look just to the right, at the little scar I have there…”

“Here is one of the downsides to dating a genius.” He laughed as he squeezed your hand for only a moment at a red light. “She never forgets anything and notices everything.”

“Like an elephant.” You nodded. “I don’t call you out on it, though. Nor do I hold it against you. It’s human nature to conceal things that you believe are not pertinent, or that you believe will hurt or inconvenience the other person. The only person I don’t let it slide from is Negan.”

“I don’t lie often.”

“Twenty-seven times.” You agreed with a nod. “In the four years, seven months, and twelve days we’ve been together, obviously excluding the six years, two months, and twenty-one days…”

“Of course you know that to the day.” He laughed as he pulled into a parking spot in front of the first maternity store you wanted to go to.

“Elephant.” You laughed as you bent over to grab your bag at the same moment your daughter stretched. You felt the hair tie that was holding your pants together pop, and you let out a groaned sigh. “This damn child just broke my pants!” Henry paused before getting out of the car to look over at you while trying to hold back a laugh. “Don’t…”

“Love, that is hysterical!”

“Just… give me your belt.” You hissed as you mentally thanked your father for tinting your windows as dark as he did so your panties weren’t on display for the whole world to see.

“Now aren’t you glad we’re going shopping?” He laughed as he handed you the strip of brown leather.

“You are never going to let me live this down, are you?” You laughed as you wrapped the long belt around you nearly twice, and tied it.

“I will when you let this morning go.”

“Well you just had that one coming.” You laughed as you re-grabbed your purse and got out of the car. “Your fault.” He put his hand on the small of your back and kept you to his right, closer to the shops, down to the Moms the Word store. The two woman working in the small shop both looked up at you, down at your belt situation, and back at you with small shakes of their head.

“Finally gave in and accepted you can’t fit in regular clothes anymore?”

“I didn’t have a choice.” You muttered with a glance up at Henry’s smirk.

“Well let’s get you into shorts that are actually comfortable to wear first, then we’ll go from there. We see this all the time.”

“I’ll be here, darling.” Henry said as he took your bag from you, and grabbed a seat on the circular couch center piece. “Enjoying the show.” You did your best to get everything you could possibly need in one store, but you had no choice but to drag him to a second to finish up. You stopped for lunch at a Greek food cart Ashleigh had shown you years prior, and complained about being to hot to eat outside, so he wasn’t forced to sit in the loud crowd of people gathering for lunch.

You could tell he was silently grateful when you put up the sun shade you rarely used, and you over exaggerated how nice the AC felt to make him feel just a little less awkward after spilling his heart out about what had triggered him in the past three weeks since he’d been back- which were also all things that you had asked him to do, that made you feel absolutely horrible for putting him through his own personal hell. You gave him to option to either pick stores he wanted to grab clothes from, since a lot of his old ones were just a bit to tight for his new muscles or to head home and call it a day, and in typical Henry fashion, he was in and out of three stores in under an hour with nearly a whole new wardrobe.

“I hate that you can do that.” You said as you got in the passenger side of your car to go home.

“Do what?” He asked as he tossed his bags in the trunk with all of yours, and headed around to the drivers side. “What did I do?”

“I hate that you can go into a store, try on two things, and walk out with like four bags of stuff. Men have it so easy.”

“Oh, don’t be jealous.” He laughed as he pulled out into traffic to head home. “I’m just hitting my breaking point.”

“I figured as much.” You said as you put your hand on his thigh again. “And now, I vote for a nice dip in the pool, maybe a nap…”

“A naked nap?” He asked smoothly with a glance over in your direction.

“You know I’m a big fan of naked naps. Oh, Goddamnit. Just… put it in reverse and run him the fuck over.”

“No matter how much I would love to.” Henry said as he led the honking purple Lamborghini down your street. “I can’t.”

“Pretty please?” You begged with a pout.

“Can’t do it, my love. Don’t want you having my step daughter in prison for vehicular manslaughter…”

“Just yell at Jim that he’s OK to come in.” You said as he pulled into the right lane while you hit the gate button. “Man, he better hope that Negan isn’t home.”

“I’ll take the bags upstairs for you, darling.” He told you softly when he finally pulled into your garage. “Just don’t get too…”

“Who the FUCK do you think you are?!” Negan roared as he stormed out of the house toward the stupidly expensive car. You and Henry both raced out of your car to stop him as Colson got out to confront your dad before confronting you.

“No. Daddy, stop.” You tried as you stopped just short of the two men.

“What, you can’t even bother to tell me you’re fucking back in town? I have to see you on the fucking streets?!”

“Check your fucking voicemails, Colson. I left thirty of them when I was leaving the country, another ten when I was in England, and I left another six when I got back to LA. I also left one hundred and nineteen texts in that time frame, on top of the fourteen emails I sent, and I got ahold of Ashleigh at each stage and had her pass messages on to you as well, which I know she did. So please, tell me what I was supposed to do from there to get your attention, huh? Hire a sky writer? Send up smoke signals, what?”

“Oh, don’t you dare fucking mock me right now. That’s my kid…”

“And right now she’s in my fucking body!” You snapped back.

“And you took her out of the country on vacation…”

“She took me to see my parents.” Henry tried, but you and Negan both reached out to silently tell him to stay out of it.

“It wasn’t a vacation, Colson. Far from it. But it gave us a starting point to what we needed to do to help him get better after he spent six years as a prisoner of war. So excuse me if placating your big, macho ego falls in third on my list of priorities after making sure our daughter is healthy, and making sure my fiancé, who I just got back in my life mind you, is OK. I told you, I don’t play fucking games. So now, you need to leave. You can see I’m back, and you can see I’m healthy. Baby girl is kicking away and happy as can be, but until you want to grow the fuck up, and answer the Goddamn phone when I call you regarding her, you’re not fucking welcome here. We talked about that, remember? Both of us in her life. That means you actually have to fucking do that.”

“You know what, you’re worse than fucking Emma.” Colson said as he pulled open his car door. “With your ‘I’m better than you’ bullshit. And that’s fucking saying something. I’m done. Raise the kid with your rugby loving basket case.”

“I’d think long and hard about making that choice, mate.” Henry said before you could respond as he stepped up to your side with a small shake of his head. “Because I’ve only been back a month, and I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll be raising that little girl for the rest of my life the moment I walked through that door. But that’s what being a man is all about, stepping up when a boy isn’t capable?”

“You son of a bitch!” Colson said as he lunged toward Henry, but Negan jumped between them while Henry moved you back behind him out of the way.

“Get in your fucking car!” Your dad shouted as he pushed your baby daddy back. “Get your fucking shit together, and man the fuck up before you fucking think of coming back!”

“Fuck you!” Colson shouted as he got in his car and angrily slammed the door. “And fuck you for trapping me into this!”

“Oh, I’m gunna fucking kill him.” You growled over the sound of his engine roaring to life as you lurched forward with the intention of knocking him out. Henry caught you carefully around the middle and pulled you back into his chest. “Fuck you!”

“OK, that’s enough excitement for today.” He said gently as he turned you around so you didn’t see Colson mark up your driveway when he peeled out of it. “Let’s go inside, now, before I actually chase him down and run him over with my car.”

“If you do, take the truck.” Negan grumbled as he headed back toward the front door. “Because if you don’t, I will on my way back to the club house.”

“Both of you are wrong.” You said loud enough for your dad to hear, too. “I’ll be the one running him over if any of us do.”

——

You had no idea what heaven really was until you were laying on it. You saw an ad for the Cozy Bump pillow/ pool float pop up on the edge of a website you were reading to review car seats, and you couldn’t stop yourself from buying it because your back depended on it’s existence. It had arrived just that morning a few minutes after Henry had left for his appointment, and you woke up Negan, and his favorite flavor of the week so he would blow it up for you. Which lead you to complete nirvana.

You didn’t even bother putting a bathing suit top, just bottoms as Negan chucked it into the pool to go and get his day started. And you also couldn’t wipe off the giant smile on your face as you took the stairs down from the patio off your bedroom on the second floor down to the first where your infinity pool was. You weren’t even mad at having to swim halfway across the pool to retrieve it. You just wanted to use your damn float! And as you carefully got on, putting your bump in the cut out hole, and situating your breast in their own cut out, you realized that this purchase was the absolute best thing you had ever done in your life.

That is how Henry found you when he got back, sleeping on your float, in the shade from the upper balcony, holding onto the edge with your foot so you wouldn’t burn in the sun. He softly called your name once, before heading up to the room to put his own swim suit on; deciding that watching you relax sounded much better than his previous idea of a run down the beach. He grabbed himself a beer from the pool bar’s fridge and walked down the steps, putting your foot back on the raft for you so he could hold it still instead.

“You’re alright, my love.” He soothed softly when you startled at the movement. “I’ve got you.”

“Ashleigh’s coming over for a pool date...”

“I’ll get you a top when she calls.” He interrupted with a smile. “Sleep.” You nodded your head and drifted off for a minute, but the small rise in your adrenaline from being startled kept you from falling back asleep completely.

“How was therapy?” You asked as you reached out to grab his knee to pull yourself closer.

“Stressful, as usual. But enlightening.” He sighed as he reached out with his dry hand and pushed your hair back to see your face better. “I think we should start trying to go out for meals. Maxwell suggested that could be a way to desensitize to loud sounds before the baby comes. I just...” He sighed as you opened your eyes to look at him with a small smile, knowing exactly what he was trying to say, but waiting for him to voice it the way he needed to to claim his fear. “I... I don’t want to hurt her and I don’t really know if it’s loud noises that trigger me, or big groups, or if they are even a trigger at all…”

“Are you asking me on a date, Mr. Cavill?” You cooed as you propped your head up on your other arm with an even bigger smile. He met your eyes and his fear slipped away in his smile.

“Why yes ma’am, yes I am.” You nodded your head as your smile grew even more.

“I think I can pencil you in.” He laughed as he set his beer on the side so he could sink deeper into the water with you.

“Just a pencil? I don’t even get a penned in date night?”

“Nope.” You breathed as he turned you so that he could crouch down beside your face. “Now this raft, however. This raft gets penned in.”

“Oh, cheeky!” He laughed as he splashed your back with water. You giggled as you pulled yourself closer with his shoulder so you could kiss him softly.

“I would love to go on a date with you, my love. And I’ll happily do whatever it is you need from me, no questions asked. Well... belly flops are kind of out right now, and so is sky diving...”

“God, I’ve missed your sass.” He laughed as he kissed you once more, before letting go of the raft just long enough to grab your phone. He answered the call from the gate, and told the guard to let Ashleigh in, who knew the override code for your driveway gate and the door by your garage so you didn’t have to get out of the pool. “I’ll go grab a top.”

“Hey, we need to talk about trading your car in.” You said as you pushed yourself up on your elbows while he pulled you over to the side. “Your warranty ends in a few months. We can get you into something new for this new chapter...”

“As long as I’m not getting into a mini van, that’s fine.” He said as he held you just long enough for you to grab the edge of the pool. “Maybe an SUV like yours?”

“Gives us something to figure out at dinner.” You called out as he headed over to the stairs quickly. “And now I’m liking the idea of a mini van!”

“Not happening!” He called over his shoulder as he jogged up the steps. You smiled and laid still for a few more moments, before carefully flipping yourself to the side.

“(Y/N)?!” Ashleigh called out as she stepped out of the elevator at the same time Henry tossed you a mismatched top.

“Out here!” You yelled as you tied up the straps, and put your raft on the side of the pool. “Love, can you grab the sunscreen?”

“OK, you need to fucking quit pestering Kels.” She said as she dropped her bag on a lounge chair and pulled off her cover-up. “And tell Negan to back off, too. Because Kels is making my life a living hell. Hi Henry, welcome home.”

“Ashleigh, I told him from the get go I wasn’t planning on doing this with him.” You said as you threw your hair in a messy bun, and grabbed your sunglasses from the edge. “If he wants his kids to have a relationship, that’s fine. I can accommodate that because it is not their fault they drew the genetic short straw and Emma agrees with me on that one. But either way, I will always be disinclined to acquiesce to his demands when it comes to my child unless he is willing to follow the same demands himself.

And I am also disinclined to placate him when he drives to my house, honking his horn and causing a scene because he’s mad he didn’t answer the ample communications regarding my daughter in the first place. I won’t do it. I refuse. My child, my fiancé, and my family... fuck, even my work come before some immature man child who refuses to grow up. If he thinks my daughter will be raised in the way Casie was, he’s got another thing coming. No offense to Emma.” Ashleigh looked a little stunned as Henry simply took the sunscreen bottle from your hands and turned you around in the pool to do your back for you, having heard this same rant the night before as you were getting ready for bed.

“Well damn.” She said after a moment as you did your front and face with the SPF 50. “OK.”

“Look, like I said, I’m in charge here, because I know what his life looks like. I’ve heard all the songs, I’ve read between the lines of his lyrics. I know the life he lives and has lived. And I know what his life is going to look in ten, twenty years from now because of it. And I won’t have my child raised in that. I did not go into this pregnancy to compromise her upbringing with someone else, especially someone who isn’t ready to be the parent he claims to want to be. And I’ve told him that countless amounts of times. So no, I will not quit ‘pestering’ when he crosses a line he drew himself. And no, I will not tell Henry, who is actually ready to be a parent on the same page as I am, not to call my child his daughter and not his step daughter because he will still be around in ten or twenty years, doing right by her. And I will never, ever tell Negan to back off protecting his daughter, and granddaughter. And you can feel free to pass that all along to him. Because from what I’ve learned from Emma, he’s not going to hear it coming from me.”

“So you talk to Emma?” She asked as she grabbed a pineapple float from near the bar and got in the pool.

“I talk to Emma on a weekly basis.” You said with a nod as you grabbed your new float and got back on it with Henry’s help. “I’ve gotten her opinion on how she raised Casie, and how Colson parents her. I’ve talked to Casie about her dad, and what they do when they spend time together. And I’ve talked to both of them about how they feel having me and the baby integrate into their lives, and how we could go about doing that with, or without Colson. He said he wanted his daughters to be in each other’s lives, so I will do that for them. But I won’t subject her to his tomfoolery.”

“Who uses that word now, my love?” Henry teased as he sat in his favorite chair raft and kicked his feet up on the edges of your float so he was keeping you close to him and out of the sun.

“Shut up.” You laughed with a glance back at him.

“He’s a good person, (Y/N).” Ashleigh sighed, knowing that you were right and being fair as she hooked her feet on the edge of the pool in the sun to work on her tan. “He really is. He’s just...” She sighed and shrugged her shoulders, which made you nod.

“He never had to grow up.” You finished for her. “And his drug use stunted the mental capacity to do so. And I don’t hold that against him.”

“I kinda do.” Henry said as he slowly started rubbing your feet for you.

“And even if Henry does, he understands where I’m coming from when I say I’ll let him in her life. But the quicker Colson realizes that I am not going to cater to the bullshit, the faster he will be able to spend time with the child he wants in his life. On my terms. In my home. Away from the drug use, and the partying, and the revolving door of women. Negan has to live by the same rules here, so I know I’m not being ridiculous, and I know it’s possible. He’s not exempt unless there’s a lock down. And he knows that if I can’t lock down here, we will be locked in his bedroom, completely off limits from the rest of the club like I was when I was a child, or more likely, we will flying to England to visit Henry’s parents, or to another safe place until it’s safe to come home and be in my own home again.”

“As your cousin, and a mother, and someone who sees his lifestyle on a daily basis, and who knows yours, I get it. I’m not holding it against you. This was never a match up I saw just falling into place. But I’ll talk to him, OK? Maybe she can be the one that can help make the changes he needs, not just for his own life, but to be an even better father to Casie as well. Not that he’s a bad father to her as is.”

“Never said he was.”

“I know.” She sighed with a nod. “It’s just... man, you guys got me stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

“That I will apologize for. But only that.”

Part 7

#too smart for your own good #machine gun kelly x reader #mgk x reader #henry cavill x reader #colson baker x reader

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jjba-hell · 4 years ago

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Fate and Fortune

Part 9 is a bit shorter but I mean hey- two pieces in one day ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Part 8 is kinda essential context

Content warnings are a bit more serious: panic attacks (implied) serious aggression, violence, what could probably be considered torture and death,

Moots: @fyre23 @risottoneroo and @rat-makes-stuff (lol hi, how are you enjoying the story?)

“Vera!” Kakyoin’s voice suddenly seemed to call her back from her panic. Her gaze shot up to meet his, all her blood running cold.

She recalled something about the bastard shooting at her and Kakyoin moving in to hide her from his sights but her memory seemed to gloss over why she couldn’t move... oh yeah

“There’s three of us and two of them- we have to be able to take them on somehow.”

“Perhaps if we knew how their stands worked but we’re flying blind.”

She leapt up and inched closer back to where she originally stood. “Not completely. Geil’s stand’s range is only as far as its next reflective surface. I can use Fortune to get him into a choice shard and Polnareff only needs to slice.”

“And the cowboy?”

“Fortune can catch the bullet- you string him up.”

Kakyoin’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. “You’re depending on yourself a bit much don’t you think?”

Vera’s anger flared dangerously so with a slow turn of her head she gazed at the redhead over her shoulder. “I’m not the same little girl that walked in on my dead parents. I’ll kill these fuckers if its the last thing I do. You were closest to Avdol, weren’t you? He’s dead, isn’t he Noriaki?”

He didnt answer, only looking back at her with the same pained expression she felt belomged on her face. She turned around, gripping his shoulders. “I can’t do this alone, we need to pull ourselves together and take them out- you understand?”

He gave a firm nod and from there, Vera’s mind ran a mile a minute. Her first stop was ripping off every mirror she could fit in her pocket. Fortune trailed behind her, giving the shiny little items a bit of luck. “It’s like launching your own targets for practice. Let’s hope Polnareff gets it.”

After a moment of panicky rescue, Polnareff and Vera switched places as the target of their attention. “Got a name, cowboy?”

“Now dollface- no need to get too involved with these folks, I don’t think my conscious could handle taking a shot at a face as pretty as yours.”

“Yeah?” Vera smiled as she phased the cigarette between the bastard’s lips into her hand and brought it up for a drag. The realization hit him, and his reaction was to reach for said cigarette where it should have been. “Well since I won’t even get a name from you... Hey Geil- care to share what kind of plans Dio has, scratch that, had for me?”

Unsurprisingly the fool took the bait because no sooner than the question was asked, an invisible hand clasped around her throat. She tossed the first coin up into the air, her movement sudden enough for him to leap up after the coin.

“JEAN NOW!”

Silver chariot zoomed through the air and the sound of silver slicing through flesh was enough of a qeue to ran after the other idiot.

He fired a shot in vain, Fortune’s hand swatting at it just in time to be caught between their middle and pointer finger.

Fortune graciously returned the bullet between his brows- not hard enough to kill but just hard enough pierce a bit of flesh. He flew back and landed with a crackly thud in the dirt.

Fortune tossed another mirror shard up in the air- for Jean to slice through. Meanwhile Vera and Kakyoin were holding Geil’s accomplice down.

“Hey, rodeo clown- where’s your accomplice hiding?” She shoved his face into the dirt- letting Hierophant tie him down tighter.

“Like hell I’m telling you.”

Another mirror shard in the air. She grabbed hold of his hair under the stupid hat and brought him to the nearest puddle. Fortune came closer, shuddering lightly as she started changing the blonde’s fortune.

“My power is for more than just stealing cigarettes. You see, that scaly feel in your throat- that’s what it would feel like if I don’t get my way and bring that cobra in the basket closer to your throat.” Her fingers dug into his mouth and forced his jaw open. “Look! He went in tail first after all.”

She waited for him to see the glowing cobra eyes hiding just behind his uvula in the reflection of the puddle before she pulled Fortune’s power back and waited for his cough to stop.

“Five hundreds yards East from here, there’s a small town. He’s hiding there.”

Her gaze moved to Kakyoin. “You and Polnareff go, I’ll hold the fort down here.” She stepped up to him, giving him the lucky trinkets in hand. “Use these if he decides to go after you.”

“And what about you?”

“I can make more, now go.”

It came as no surprise to see the Hanged Man bouncing between going after the men and taking her on. Vera watched as he hovered in the glass window near the edge of town. She brought Fortune closer to try and take the stand but when it spoke she pulled back for a moment.

“My mother predicted your fever and your connection to the Wheel of Fortune. My mother had told Lord Dio, there was only two ways to deal with you- sway you or kill you. I understand now why, you make your chosen probability happen by means of closing every other option. Even now, I was compelled- stuck to only one option. You outrank me.”

She watched in the reflection of the window as Fortune’s fingers gripped the stand in its hands and squeezed, the phantom scratches of its fighting against Fortune’s arms causing an unpleasant itch on her own arms. “You’re death is not my reward.”

Fortune dropped the stand and soon it shot out of sight- probably after its own body.

Vera lit another cigarette as she walked over to the leftover idiot. In a last ditch attempt he brought his pistol out and pointed it at her. “Close range is not the best way to take me on, darling.” He warned hysterically.

A grin spread over her lips, kneeling down to let him press the barrel of the gun against her forehead. “Try it.”

The click followed and turns out- it was an empty chamber. She tilted her head in question. “Nice try, though.”

With her own hand she grabbed hold of his shirt and punched his lights out with the other.

Fortune dragged the unconscious bastard behind her as she returned to where Avdol’s body was. The idea made her nauseous to see his dead body but she needed the closure.

It was once again denied to her as all that was left was the bloody puddle he was slain at. Her legs carried her to the nearest witness and was about to explode on them but the hand on her shoulder had her hand whipping her head to look behind her. It was Jotaro.

All the madness that took her over up until that point left her body completely and she leapt up into his arms- sobbing uncontrollably at the open ache in her chest.

For a moment she was that sobbing child running towards Avdol’s house after she lost her parents, the mere thought of that now, the fact that even he was gone opened up wounds that weren’t ready to be shown to the world.

She cried until her body couldn’t hold out anymore, her breath finally calm enough to let her separate from Jotaro. When she looked around her she groaned at the sight of Geil’s accomplice gone with the wind and the others berating the girl she could only assume was the reason why.

“Are you good to go?”

She peered up at him, eyes tired from all the crying.

“Yeah, I guess we can go.” She started walking off towards the others but Jotaro’s hand wrapped around her wrist and he pulled her back just a bit. Vera expected something grand or something from his heart, she looked at him expectantly but instead she got a line far better.

“He’s not dead.”

#jojo's bizarre adventure #jojo no kimyou na bouken #JoJo part 3 #jonathan joestar #Noriaki Kakyoin #Jean Pierre Polnareff #Jotaro Kujo #Muhammed Avdol #Hol Horse #J Geil/ Hanged Man #Fate and Fortune

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theflashdriver · 4 years ago

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Time After Time (Silvaze)

The weather was fair yet cloudy, it wasn't too warm, but it wasn't too cold and the tide was almost fully in. Sunset was a little more than a few hours away, before it came the clouds would break further and a beautiful, pink-red, sky would be revealed. No attacks would come today; there would be no evil, hairbrained, scheme put into motion on either a domestic or galactic level, though such a plan had been entirely unmade a little more than a day prior. Yes, today, this calm day at the docks of Soleanna was one that Silver the hedgehog knew well. To most of his friends, today might have seemed especially mundane but he knew it differently. To him, this day was like no other. Although, unlike when he'd first lived it, he was viewing it through the lens of nostalgia.

Despite his knowledge and experience of today, Silver the hedgehog was quietly quaking in his boots as he wandered past the shops and restaurants on the city's most coastal street. When he'd last been here, to this exact day rather than this exact place, he'd been fourteen years old and yet, as he'd come to know, it wasn't the first time he'd visited this city and it certainly wasn't his first time being fourteen. Currently he was twenty-four in terms of linear time. He'd gained a lot since that day, both in terms of height and understanding his place in life, but it wouldn't be farfetched to say he felt all that and more had been stripped away. He felt as though he'd reverted into an insecure and nervous youth, not as a result of this time nor place but as a result of his intended next action.

Walking side by side with him, holding his hand in hers, was a feline who'd matured in equal measure to him, linearly and otherwise. Blaze wasn't wearing her usual guardian uniform, the ten-year anniversary of them reuniting had warranted a change in both of their wardrobes. While he had donned spiffy black boots, a set of nicer gloves, a white dress shirt with black trousers and a bowtie that he was seriously regretting, she had put herself in a full suit. A deep burgundy jacket and trouser combination hid a button up, white-silken shirt and a purple-wine coloured tie. She'd kept her heels but, despite their best efforts, he was still just a little taller. She seemed to like such outfits far better than the dresses she'd once been forced into. Suits seemed to further imbue her with a certain brand of confi-

She came to a sudden halt, causing him to stumble, and the rolling of her eyes fully derailed his train of thought.

"If you spend all night watching me, you'll miss the sunset," She'd caught him staring and come to a stop, a small smirk had formed on her muzzle. Just as quickly as she'd halted though, the princess took a small lead and pulled him after her, "Come on, let's find somewhere for dinner."

A few years prior, she'd have insisted he keep his eyes forward and stop looking. Safe to say, she'd gotten far better at hiding her blush. While once he'd been oblivious, now he was the one who'd stammer and redden. The heat laying siege to his muzzle was proof enough of that. As he sped up to match her pace, he fought not to meet her eyes nor muzzle again. In lieu of that, he managed to turn his attention to the sea and tightly grip an object that he'd stashed deep within his right pocket; a small, purple, ring box. It was the clear source of his nervousness, a source that he half hoped was obvious to her and half hoped was not. He wanted to surprise her, even just a little, but to say he was tense about proposing was an understatement.

Blaze was his partner, she had been when they'd battled monsters in a city overtaken by flames and now, she was again. Even during their younger years together in that prior life, he'd always just kind of figured they'd stick together forever. Back then that mentality derived from a rather simple and childish desire to stay with his best friend for ever and ever but, with time, that want had rather evolved. She was still his best friend and yet she was something much more. It'd taken time, they'd fought for ages to overcome the denial and embarrassment that came with their burgeoning feelings, but, in the end, they'd managed to admit their love for one another. He cared for her in a way that he knew he couldn't care about anyone or anything else. Their loss of one another had brought what'd gone unspoken and unthought of to light, even if it'd blinded them at first.

This was just like that first step towards love all over again, he felt like he was stumbling at each and every step, but now there was something even deeper to it. He'd been too young, naïve and oblivious to understand what he was really getting into when they'd first started dating. Blaze was a princess, her family had defended her kingdom for generation upon generation, their romantic lives had historically involved suitors, people with power and land in her world. Only a few generations prior, becoming the second half of a royal pair had been an event that Blaze could only describe to him as ludicrous with competitions and bribery and all manner of horrendous implications. It was supposed to be a bizarre spectacle of some sort, guesses and bets were gruesomely made on who would take the royal's hand.

Asking the girl who'd died for his future, who he'd been more than willing to die for, who'd call him naïve, chastise his insecurity and who he couldn't live without to marry him would be ludicrously difficult. Asking that same girl, who also just happened to be the princess and guardian of an entire world in which he was a relative nobody and a stranger, seemed practically impossible. She cared so deeply for her people and their wants, more than she cared for herself. He'd so casually tended to other people's futures, yet he was scared to take a serious step towards theirs. He'd battled monsters and lived through the unliveable but asking his closest companion a simple question seemed far more gruelling.

Pulling his right hand from his pocket, he reached up to awkwardly tug at the small cluster of chest fur he had access to. He was probably a little underdressed for all this, she'd made such a bold choice while he'd been indecisive, but that was nothing new. He'd recommended this place and time both due to its romanticism and to force himself to act. This was the exact day they had reunited, that moment was mere hours away. Out there a much younger Silver and Blaze were blindly wandering across the city, on an inevitable collision course. There would only be one opportunity to actually act on his want, a moment he thought perfect to pop the question. If he failed today then the site where he wanted to propose would be overcrowded, a seemingly impossible task would truly become impossible.

They'd known where and when they were visiting today, but, beyond that, they'd essentially schemed in secret. Though this beachside wasn't unlike those in her dimension, they both knew the area well enough to take each other on unique, albeit relaxed, adventure. There was a good star watching spot just outside the city, a few good movies playing, some attractions that would currently be going unused and plenty of historical sights. He'd promised to take care of their early actions while their later efforts were up to her.

"So, did you have an actual plan for dinner? It's a Tuesday night, I doubt we'll need any reservations…" She half asked and half mused.

"O-Oh, right," He'd been pulled from his thoughts again. Looking to her and tugging more tightly at his chest fur, Silver explained his plan, "Yes, I made plans. There's a place that does really good pasta around here. It'll close down in a couple of years, but the head chef will go on to start running a far bigger and busier restaurant in station square. His current restaurant is quieter, a small place on the waterfront that's much too expensive for its owner to maintain," Realising he was rambling, releasing all he had researched in the future, he caught himself, "B-But that just means the view is very good, it's not too far from here either."

"That sounds perfect, let's go then-

"W-Wait," He stopped walking this time, she turned to him with a small quirk on her brow. Much more and she'd start asking questions and he'd crumble where he stood, "Before the restaurant, there's somewhere I'd like to go first. It's just a little further ahead."

She gave him a knowing look before resuming her lead, their reunion was burned into her memory just as it was his, "I suppose that we can go there first, but it's hardly going to vanish."

"So will we though," He interjected, walking alongside her, "So I figured we should probably avoid that, I don't really know what'll happen if we bump into ourselves. I've never really done it before."

"Doesn't that mean we should be avoiding the wharf at all costs? Perhaps even the whole city," She questioned.

"Maybe but," He scrambled for an answer, "I just thought it'd be romantic. I think we can stand to do it just this once, I know I'll be too distracted by you to notice another of myself hiding nearby."

"Well, I suppose the same is true of me… and it is a rather special place," He could tell by the flicking of her tail that she was curious, she knew he was up to something, but also genuinely interested in visiting the site, "I suppose, just this once. I think we might start to notice if there's more than four of us in the vicinity. It might distract from another day's romanticism."

It took a lot to keep himself from sighing with relief but, despite that urge, he was still incredibly nervous. She'd agreed to come to the spot, but he still had to act once they'd arrived. He knew what he wanted to say, he knew what he wanted to do, but putting that into motion was going to take the sum of his willpower. Even then, that might not be enough. He hoped the site of such memories would catalyse him.

A squeeze of his hand tugged him from his thoughts again, Blaze was scanning him with a lingering inquisitiveness. He beamed at her, fully knowing she'd recognise the nervousness behind it. Fortunately, she seemed to take it in good faith; her shoulder gently met with his as she walked just a little bit closer to him. Their relationship with contact like this had changed a lot over the years, going from natural to embarrassing to natural once more. The hedgehog was glad he could find such comfort in her touch. Despite having regained both his memories and his companion ten years ago, he was still a little new to contact. While he'd hug and hold others, the quiet moments were still reserved for her.

"What about later tonight? Have you planned a lot?" He inquired, realising that he'd been too deep in thought to properly drum up conversation.

"I've got a couple of things up my sleeve, you'll just have to wait and see what happens," She hinted, leaning just a little bit more to accentuate her point, "It'll just depend what we have time for and where our wanders take us."

"I told you everything but you're not going to say anything?" He whined, half-jokingly, "Blaze, please..."

The only response he received was her tail winding around his waist and her leading ever so slightly faster.

Clearly, she planned to lead him on for the entire evening. He'd kind of come to expect that from their dates. While he planned relatively simple things for the most part, innocent and obvious, the feline enjoyed playing with him quite a lot. Her position in her home world meant that dates were often sporadic, arranged at the last minute or constantly shuffled and reshuffled, but she'd learned to take advantage of that. He'd find her at his door and, very quickly, find himself being pulled across islands and in all sorts of directions. Despite this, she didn't like to take advantage of her position as guardian. Most commonly, they would find themselves hiking across far off islands and cooking in by campfire or she'd order food and pull him up to the castle for a night in. Blaze seemed to relish in surprising him with what was, in comparison to the lives they knew and had known, relatively regular things. He'd be lying if he said, just as he had her, he'd fallen in love with things being regular.

He threw another glance oceanward, finding the sky still overly cluttered with white, fluffy, masses, untouched by the reds and pinks of a sunset. The change in tone from day to night couldn't have been too far away, they were going for dinner rather than a late lunch after all, but the lack of signs was giving him some comfort. As they reached his intended destination, it told him that they still had some time.

He'd brought her to the site at which they'd soon be reuniting. They wouldn't quite be meeting for the first time in this lifetime but they would remember what they were to one another. It was a stairway down to the thin wharf that edged along the entire coast and splayed out in places to create small harbours. It was a simple, unassuming, sight; but the view of the sea from those stairs was breath-taking, even when the sun wasn't setting.

The first time they'd visited here was the darkest day of their life. Amy Rose had just stopped him from killing Sonic, displaying her love by defending the blue blur with her body before bluntly admitting how much she cared for him. Uncertain how to proceed from here, Silver's faith in their mission shaken, he'd meandered his way to these steps and found himself moping but, ultimately, had been distracted by the sight and smell of the sea. Eventually Blaze had joined him but, with the future on the line, he hadn't had the strength to so much as mention the beauty of their surroundings, let alone suggests they sit for a while. They were trying to save their world, but the cost of such a victory proved to be too much. He'd lost both her and his memories of her only a handful of hours later. They both ended up reincarnating into entirely different lives in total opposite locations, they'd become strangers.

In this life though, this spot held a very different meaning. It was where they'd reforge their connection, where she'd convince him to visit her world for the first time and he'd managed to claim a moment of true peace for the first time across any of his lives. That peace hadn't lasted for too long of course, the future was still destroyed back then, but it'd been enough of a taste that he knew what he wanted and where he wanted to be.

Leaving her side, he rushed up to arrive at the top of the stairs and took a seat on the far-right side. Sitting himself on its pale wooden boards, he patted the spot next to him. She rolled her eyes and grew another smirk before walking over to sit with him. These were the positions that their past selves would soon take to talk and, eventually, reminisce. He swore he could see the slightest twinge of pink on the clouds but, beyond that, the cluttered sky was still hiding many secrets.

He turned his attention to her, just in time for her head to meet with his shoulder, "It's not quite the view I remember, but it's getting there."

A bigger smile broke onto his face, he reached across his body with his right hand and held it flat to her; fingertips to the sky. Without so much as blinking, she brought her left hand to meet it. Palm to palm and finger to finger before, gently, their fingers slipped into a grasp. This was the first contact they'd made in this lifetime, the trigger to remembering had been no more than a simple touch.

Silver knew what he wanted to do, he'd been riling himself up to do it all day, but he couldn't help staring for just a moment. He could easily imagine the younger feline who'd just regained her memories; the combined look of shock, regret and happiness was unlike any expression she'd worn before or since. Now she just looked happy, peaceful even, so much had changed across these lives; the places, their comfort and feelings alike. After a minute or so of flickering between her and the ocean, he took a deep breath and steeled himself.

His closer hand was still locked in her grasp, so he stretched with his right and struggled to cross his hand over his body to delve into his right jacket pocket. Once he'd grasped the box, he threw a glance in her direction only to find her expression had changed; she was squinting, but not at the horizon. Almost instinctively, he followed her eyeline only to find that the cloud barrier had shifted slightly. The orange sun was struggling to break through the clouds.

It was as Silver realised this, that he felt Blaze's hand slip free from his and a sudden push impact his right shoulder, sending him tumbling from the banister-less staircase and onto the wharf below. The moment he hit the ground he used his powers to force flip himself back upright, prepared to fly back up the stairs, but the suit-clad feline had jumped straight after him and very almost knocked him back to the ground.

"W-What's going on? What was-

Before he could finish, her hands had found his shoulders and shunted him backwards. His back met with wood, her palms were on his chest and the sky was blocked by the edge of the staircase above. She'd pushed him into the minuscule nook beneath the wharf's staircase, the sea was directly beneath their feet once again. Before he could shift, the princess moved. She was no longer pinning him with her body so much as caging him, her hands placed against the wood at either side of his neck. This wasn't a position he was new to, but she had fully caught him by surprise. His muzzle was painted fully crimson, sweat immediately began to pool on his brow, but Blaze wasn't even looking at him; her gaze was thrown to the boards above them. He only half understood what was happening but, before he could ask, she gave a demand.

Her words came out hushed and sharp, "Stay still, keep quiet. I think you're about to arrive."

It took a moment for those words to process, he hardly had an impeccable sense of time, but he was certain they weren't about to meet. It was only then that he realised what of that day he remembered; only really from meeting Blaze onward, the exact point of his arrival was lost on him. He remembered the sky just beginning to change as she called out to him and he turned, but not the minutes leading up to that.

"Already? I didn't see myself or anything," Silver answered, trying to keep his voice equally low, "How do you know?"

"The clouds were beginning to part," She hesitated, as footsteps padded above them, "When I found you that day, my eyes landed on you because you were caught in the first sunbeam. I saw it starting."

He'd just thought it was somewhere nice to sit, he hadn't noticed that back then. Looking up and to his right, he saw a glimmer of sunlight breaking through the slats. Silver couldn't see much from his position, but he knew well enough to take her word for it. Well, that and he didn't have the strength to. He'd waited a moment too long and missed his opportunity, that realisation sapped him of energy. His other self hadn't arrived mid-proposal, but he had failed.

"What're we going to do?" She questioned.

"I guess we'll just have to stay here and keep still," He sheepishly mumbled, feeling thoroughly to blame. They'd be sat up there for a good few hours, "If things go how they're supposed to then they shouldn't notice us and, when they remember, we might be able to slip away?"

"You're right, I think leaving before that would be dangerous. Changing the future here could be dangerous," She nodded, her head very almost meeting with his, "Remembering will probably distract them enough," Her eyes flickered back to the wood above, "Well, distract us enough."

She didn't look upset, but he couldn't help grimacing; he'd effectively stranded them, "I'm sorry, I should have timed this better."

"Oh hush," She looked at him, seriousness in her eyes but a joking smirk on her lips, "Even if you should have, this is a very fitting experience. I never considered that we could relive this," As his brow softened, the harshness fled her eyes and a small spark of excitement took its place. Footsteps sounded overhead. Silver the hedgehog, age fourteen, had just arrived, "Let's enjoy ourselves."

His chance to propose was dashed, he couldn't move his body nor his spirit from this position, but at least she was happy. This was a rather unique opportunity, no one else could really relive a significant moment in their life as they were about to. Even if it wasn't the new experience he'd wanted to give her, at least it was an old one that he knew was close to their hearts. As he watched her eyes drift across the woodwork above, he couldn't help but marvel at her again. The drop had made her fur ever so slightly unkempt, almost urging or asking him to push the pieces back into place. She hid her emotions so well, but he was equally skilled at uncovering them. As she stared at the boards above, he couldn't help but keep noticing that smile on her muzzle and the slow batting of her tail. She wasn't lying about wanting to enjoy this.

He gently reached up, made cramped by her holding, and went to push back a strand that was dangling from her ponytail. He'd only just made contact when a voice called him to flinch and pin himself back against the wood.

"So, it is you," Those four simple words clued him in to this current moment without holding any real meaning whatsoever. That voice was one he knew all too well; it was that of Blaze the cat, age fourteen. Almost instantly, even without seeing, he could visualise the goings on above them.

"Oh, hey!" His own mid-pubescent voice almost brought his toes to curl, but his eyes did flicker to the woodwork above. He couldn't really see anything, but he perfectly remembered what was happening, "I've seen you a few times before. What was your name again…? I don't think I've asked before..."

Once he finished stumbling over himself, she'd take two steps closer and make a brief introduction, punctuated with a nod, "I am Blaze the cat, guardian of the Sol Emeralds."

"Blaze… that name really does sound familiar," The reason for that would soon become apparent to the youngster, "Well, I'm Silver! Thank you for helping out the past couple of days, you were amazing!"

She'd pause for a moment, still stood somewhere behind him. Meanwhile, his prior self would quickly turned his attention back to the water, confused by a strange feeling that was engulfing him, "Why are you not with the others? Surely they're celebrating another victory?"

"If I'm honest, I don't really know," A bizarre feeling had pulled him there, a wanderlust like no prior, "When I first arrived, I just happened to pass through here; the blue sky over the sea looked so pretty. I felt like I was supposed to see the sunset on it before I left, I figured it'd be even nicer than the regular sky," Yes, soon the clouds would part to reveal a beautiful sunset, but that would pale in comparison to what he was about to receive, "You're not at the party either though, did you come out here to watch the sunset?"

"You could say that," She had chosen to offer, obscuring that very same feeling in her heart, "…Would you mind if I joined you? I don't know why, I've seen the sun drift beneath the sea a million times, but this seems… rather important."

"Important?" She'd confused him but offered no elaboration, "Of course you can, anyone who wants can and should see this," He'd pet the spot next to him but she'd choose to sit a good half foot further away, "The skies of this time can be so pretty, I can't wait to see it reflected on the water!"

Now that pair were sitting side by side, an awkward silence engulfing them as they tried to focus on the sea but kept exchanging hesitant glances. The older Silver allowed his eyes to flicker to his Blaze. Any lingering concern had left her face and been replaced by a curious stare, it briefly dropped to grace his muzzle before flickering back to the floorboards above them. Given their positioning, she likely had the better view, perhaps she could even see herself. As long as neither of their past versions caught on, nothing could go wrong.

Silver was reminded of the ring in his pocket. His hope of presenting it was abandoned but, at this moment at least, he was almost too awed to worry about that. Even if he'd wanted to right now, and he'd thoroughly kick himself later for not acting, another moment would come. This was still something special. He cast his gaze towards the ocean, the clouds had split far further now and cotton candy colourations were fanning out across the sky. No reflections were clear yet but, within the next half hour, he knew they would begin to appear; that truly beautiful sky would arrive soon. By the time that the pair above had made their peace, the world before them would be cast in the most stunning of colours. Regardless of what happened this evening, regardless of how events progressed, this would linger in his mind as one of the best days he'd ever lived, and now they were getting to experience it for a second time.

Despite being pinned to the wall, despite the tension tied to hiding and the loss of his engagement plan, the lapping of the waves just feet beneath them, the gentle glow of the sun on the horizon and the closeness of her frame to his was putting him entirely at ease. When he was fourteen, he'd been drawn here, but now it felt like he was meant to be here. His ears flickered as the conversation picked back up.

"Is this really the only reason you didn't stay for the party?" The young princess had dared to ask, opting to break the quiet for once. Even before they'd remembered each other, they'd been able to read the other's voice and expression so fluently.

"Well, mostly, yeah," She'd just thrown him a look, a look that told him that she could tell he was lying, "Th-That and, well…" It wasn't that he was embarrassed at being caught so much as he was struggling to disclose a truth that he didn't truly understand, "If I stay for the party then they'll ask me to stay longer, I think… a-and if I do that, then I won't be prepared for the next problem," He'd be scratching at his chest fur now, surely, "I don't know, they probably want me there but don't realise that they shouldn't have me there. I'm more useful elsewhere, you know?"

"You're so naïve," That was the first time he'd been called that in this lifetime, "If you're not going to stay for long, then you should have stayed for as long as you could and had your fill of fun rather than worrying and cutting it short. They'd probably rather have you around for a short while than not at all. They're sad but they've always understood when I've had to go," The feline was giving advice that she herself should probably be taking, "These opportunities are rare for me and, by your tone, I assume they are for you too."

"They are a little, yeah. I don't stay in the same time as them. You're probably right but… there's also just something about this sky, I don't know what it is…" Just now he'd turned to her, he'd got his first proper look at her and noticed the gem that marked her forehead. Something about it, her clothes and the colour of her fur would seem familiar too, just like her name, "Why aren't you with them? You're their friend too, right?"

"Hm," She'd been staring at him, though she'd probably just turned away from his inquisitive look, "I suppose I just needed some air and peace. It's nice to be away from my kingdom but it would seem I've exchanged one rowdy crowd for a different, albeit more social, sort."

The older Blaze snorted ever so slightly, "I'd been curious about you ever since the prior battle, I just couldn't bring myself to admit it."

"This is so strange," The twenty-four-year-old hedgehog mumbled, eyes flickering from the upper left in order to meet his girlfriend's gaze, "Is it weird that I'm really enjoying this? It's so strange, being an observer to the very reason we're here. If I hadn't come here that day and you'd decided not to talk to me, we wouldn't be here right now."

Silver noticed a change in her demeanour, the waving of her tail stopped and the smile on her face grew. Something was going through her head, she was contemplating something very deeply, but that expression quickly passed. Her shoulders rolled into a more relaxed position and her features softened, forming into a look he knew all too well. The hedgehog had no idea what she had decided, but he already knew the result of it.

He felt her grip shift slightly; the base of her palms was pushing on the edge of his shoulders. She'd already been close, but now her nose was bumping against his. She'd captured all of his vision, her tone was still hushed but, somehow, huskier, "Why don't you pay just a little more attention to the here and now…"

Her head tilted, he felt the weight of her wrists drop to his clavicle as her tail had managed to curl its way around his leg. The scent of her lavender perfume was surely beginning to mark him, its aroma was almost hypnotising him. The first kiss landed lightly, a stunning but soft peck on his lips, but the second was just heavy enough to get her message across. A gentle bite at his lower lip followed, a request for access.

He granted it without hesitation, the third kiss pushed him against the wood and brought his back to curve as he conceded to her control. Overhead they were still talking, growing more distracted and fascinated by the other with each passing moment. Still, they had to keep this subtle and quiet, Silver knew fine well that Blaze could have been doing more to overpower him. Through this kiss, their eyes had remained half lidded and captured within the other's glow; never quite breaking. His hands came to hold her, his fingers almost clawing at the small of her back as he tried to pull her even closer.

Their passionate bout soon paused though, she'd pulled back as a handful of familiar words spilled from the younger hedgehog's mouth, "You really do look familiar, I know I've seen you before but… it's like there's more to it than that? I'm not really sure how to describe it."

"Oh?" The feline half-hummed, trying not to seem desperate for answers but prompting him to speak further.

"I came here to look at the sky, but I can't stop looking at you. It's like you're drawing me in," The future hedgehog of the past explained, eyes locked on her, "I don't think his has ever happened to me before."

"Well, I'm sorry to be such a distraction. It is a beautiful sky…" She answered, not even looking at the very view that they were discussing, "But I'd be lying if I said you weren't distracting me too."

"R-Really?" The sound of shifting above caught him just a little off guard, he'd forgotten that he'd been the one to move closer first, "I've never felt anything like this before, it's like I already know you…"

"It's so strange but… I feel the same," A shuffling came from further behind him, the climax was about to arrive, but, once again, the adult Silver's attention was pulled from the princess above and towards the one in front of him.

His Blaze had shifted, her hands had dropped from his shoulders and found her sides, the feline's eyes had broken from his and a seriousness had overtaken his muzzle. They'd gone from so intimate to bordering on distant in no more than a minute. She caught his eyes only to part from them again, reaching down and dusting off both her jacket and her trousers. Had she noticed or remembered something that he hadn't? Were they at risk of being spotted? Was she preparing turn?

Even though his attention had been stolen, Silver's ears still picked up the younger hedgehog's voice, "But you aren't from around here, are you? There's no way we could have met before."

"I'm certain I'd remember your face," The young feline commented before seeming to catch herself, "Well, it feels like I do remember your face…"

"I wonder if…" He'd just started a sentence that he'd never get to finish.

Their hands had touched, that contact had sparked something that lingered deep within their very souls. They'd undone the lock and regained the memories of their past life. In little more than a second, he'd learned of another life in which he'd fought for a bright future, she'd learned of a world and time that so heavily contrasted that of her present one. Most importantly though, they'd both learned of each other.

The current Blaze though, his Blaze, had taken a single step away from him as their past selves made their first contact of this lifetime. Her eyes had returned to his, bring with them a steely serious expression that he'd thought was reserved for only the most difficult of fights, "Silver…"

"Y-Yes?" He stammered.

She dropped to one knee. Her right hand had sunk into her pocket. He immediately understood what was happening. His jaw slacked and eyes went wide as the princess revealed a small, silver, box.

"We've lived both together and apart; I don't ever want to be apart again. I want to stay with you for the rest of my life," Her voice was stable but he could see hints of concern in her demeanour. Little quirks like the flicking of her tail and the bending of her ears; little things that only he could identify. Those worries were entirely pointless, of course. He felt himself begin to shake; his vision had begun to blur.

The hedgehog managed to take a stumbling step forward, closing the gap.

"I know this sudden, but I've been carrying this little box with me for five months now, just waiting for the right time," Her voice was still quiet but, somehow, it cut through the splashing of waves and talk above. She captured held attention in a way that nothing else could, "I can't imagine that there'll ever be a better moment than this…"

The box was thumbed open, revealing a golden right with a band of inset red gems, like a combination of his cuffs and the jewel on her forehead. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, all their moving and talk faded from recognition as his vision shrunk to the ring alone and the face just above it. He hadn't expected this, he hadn't remotely considered it!

But it was perfect, it was so perfect.

"Considering all we've been through, both in this life and the last, this might seem like a formality, but…" That iron expression was wavering, being cracked away by the pressure behind her inevitable next words, "I want to spend my life with you. Will you marry me?" The question was asked but, before he could give an answer, she had started to talk again, "I know that-

"Y-Yes," It took all he had not to shout as he cut her off, almost falling forward as he reached for the ring and her hands, "Yes, of course Blaze! Of course I will!"

It took some fumbling to get the ring onto his finger, the sound of their past selves shouting and crying with mixed joy and regret acted as an impossible backdrop to this unimaginable occasion. The sun had broken through the clouds, the sunset was freely visible; everything had aligned so perfectly, even if he had failed earlier. In the moment, they almost forgot that this was their time, their chance to escape before their past selves noticed.

Once the ring was on, his hand slipped back into hers. With no more than a single glance up to their past selves, finding them on their feet and clinging to each other as though the universe was about to tear them apart again, the newly engaged couple ran along the wharf. They tried to keep light-footed at first but, eventually, their footfalls rang across the wood. The adrenaline of the moment carried him and, almost certainly, her as they dashed. It perhaps wasn't the most normal thing, proposing and then running from your past self, but it made this endeavour all the more memorable.

They ran until the sun had slipped its way down to sit on the ocean's smooth skyline, slowing themselves to a halt as they arrived at another set of stairs. It was narrower and more crudely constructed, attached to a small harbour that was home to a trio of small vessels. Side by side, shoulder to shoulder, they took a seat on those cramped stairs and began to catch their breath. Silver's mind was still racing, his eyes flickered to her before crashing into the ring on his finger; he could hardly believe it was real. He passed his thumb over it, feeling the smooth bands that shielded the gemstones.

"Blaze," She very quickly turned to him, "Th-That was incredible!"

"I know me doing this means something more than you were maybe hoping, taking any role in the royal family is difficult, let alone the one you are," She wasn't quite meeting his eye, instead choosing to almost look past him. He felt her hand slip from his, "Was I too sudden? Were you ready for me to ask? I know I didn't really drop any hints, but I wasn't sure how to. I thought about discussing our future, but we did most of that when we started dating, and you seemed happy so…"

Thoughts ran rampant through his mind, concerns and regrets; not about her choice to act, but his own inaction. He was overwhelmed, happier than he'd ever been, and now he had an opportunity to reassure her and return that happiness. That ring was burning a hole in his pocket, it was the answer to this problem. If he could will himself to draw it, then her worries would disappear. What kind of fool would he be if he failed to?

She kept talking through his silence, worry still plagued her face, "I also know that this is another huge responsibility you'd be taking on, and with the future at peace you might have hoped you'd never really have another. If you want some time to think or-

"P-Please don't worry about that, Blaze. I-I…uhm," The nervousness in his tone surely wasn't helping her. He closed his eyes, curled his toes and took a deep breath. He had to do this properly, "I have something for you too," Taking her left hand in his, Silver rose from the stair only to turn and drop to one knee. After a moment of rummaging through his pocket, a small box was retrieved and held before him. By the way and speed that her initial surprise dovetailed into a more relaxed joy, he knew that he had offset her worries. Even if it was a little pointless now, he unleashed the words he'd been reciting for months now, "Blaze, I don't want to lose you again. I've spent a life with you and one without you, nothing and no one could fill your place in my heart. I want to stay by your side forever, I always have. Both in this life and our past one, there's nowhere I'd rather be than with you."

The ring box sprung open with no more than a thought, revealing a silver band with a large red gemstone. Tears still lingered in his eyes, but now they'd started to form in hers. Without missing a step, she lowered herself to match his height and let her lips find his again. He was hardly able to focus but, with a little more fumbling, his ring found itself on her finger. Tonight had hardly started, and what little they'd done had gone entirely contrary to his plan, but, just as he'd thought it ten years ago, this truly was the best night of his life.

#silvaze #proposal #fanfiction #sonic #Silver the Hedgehog #Blaze the Cat #sonic the hedgehog #romance

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elmidol · 4 years ago

Text

This Language We Speak (NSFW)

Three Blind Tooke Part Three Death is an Art

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Warnings: sex

Three Blind Tooke

Part Three: Death is an Art

Chapter Forty-Seven: This Language We Speak

The parts of ourselves we dare to love,

The compromises that we make;

Sometimes, together, we must be strong,

It’s what this pivotal death will take.

Children were the future of the galaxy, which meant that they were to be protected. It also meant that Supreme Leader Armitage Hux would not fail to target the future generation of Force users that would openly oppose him. The children aboard the transport shuttle that Navrin piloted had been raised in a community in conflict with the ideals held by the First Order. Most were at an age where they would remember everything with a clarity, each blow dealt by Supreme Leader Hux ingrained in their memory, shaping them and turning them forever into an enemy of that redhead. Though it had split into two separate factions, the size of the First Order remained large and allowed Supreme Leader Hux to send forces your way without stretching his army thin. Having all of those children in a single vessel made for an easy target. It was immediately clear that Hux had known of the children, of the plan, and had counted on the Resistance to send aid without question.

Essentially weaponless, the starship had not made it far before you came to believe that your life was about to come to an end...again, technically. You furrowed your brow at that unbidden thought then rearranged the features of your face. The children were already quaking in their boots. Close to half of them were human, the others varying in species enough that you learned Force sensitives had been gathering together for quite some time. Was it before or after Snoke’s death that they had arrived on the planet?

Doesn’t matter, you thought, thumbing the control for the comm unit. The scrambler that Rose had installed wasn’t going to do much good without an ally in the immediate vicinity. What it would do was allow you to contact one of the other Resistance allies so that they could relay the message that this mission had met in failure. There would be no one coming to your rescue, no one to search for the space dust that you would become.

The thing was, you were not yet ready to make that call. It was not stupidity that kept you from doing so. It was a tad bit of stubbornness in some respect; more than anything, it was that you had learned patience. You had learned how to make quick calculations and adapt to these sort of situations. General Leia Organa had likely selected you for this mission partly because of that acquired skillset. There was the additional factor of what you could see of Navrin’s reaction. He had not broken a sweat.

Five ships had made their appearance. One was a small warship, the other four TIE fighters. You frowned at the small number that had been deployed. Grasped the back of the pilot’s chair and leaned forward to stare out the viewport. Behind you, the children were making noises. You had previously instructed them to knock it off, albeit with a gentle tone, when more than one had been making a comment of everyone being about to die. That sort of negativity did nothing more than stir up mass hysteria, which would be too kriffing distracting when both you and Navrin were working to find some sort of escape route that would work. The odds were not in your favor, but that did not matter.

Navrin dodged the first barrage of fire from the TIEs, which you knew was nothing more than a mock run. You clenched your jaw, looked over your shoulder at the children to ensure they remained secured in their harnasses, and turned back to watch out the viewport. The enemy hoped to lure out your allies, anyone you would call for aid. That was a mistake some pilots made even when they had been instructed to not. Panic did the worst to one’s mind. You eyed the comm unit. Even with the scrambler, there was a chance that a message would still get intercepted.

Things were not in your favor, but that did not mean you were hopeless. First, you decided, you wanted to try something. It would be a move from Dameron’s book, one that he would have approved of. You utilized the comm unit in a way that had not been discussed by anyone present. You requested contact with the First Order lead ship. It did not take long for the request to be approved.

Air escaped your lungs and blood drained from your face when you saw who was in command of that warship. Captain Phasma no longer had her chrome armor. Her blonde hair was slicked back in a similar manner to how Hux had once worn his. Her face was partially concealed by a visor and mouthpiece, however it was by no means a full mask. The colors she wore were First Order colors. On her shoulder was a ysalamir. The sight of it made your stomach churn as memories pushed towards the forefront of your mind.

Navrin did break a sweat at the sight of the woman. He hadn’t been able to use his Force abilities to sense her. The creature that was on Phasma’s shoulder further weakened the chances of this mission ending in success.

You should have guessed that the First Order would not relinquish the ysalamir. It was an effective defense, as well as weapon, against both of its main enemies. The Resistance and the Order of Ren.

We were never relying on the Force as a weapon for this, you said, gathering your bearings. “Phasma.” Your voice did not shake in the least. This earned a grunt of acknowledgment from the woman on the other side of the transmission. Navrin was going through his own thoughts. You could tell that he was working to formulate a plan, one that would allow you to escape. The difficult rested in making a successful hyperspace jump that was not tracked by the First Order. The success also rested in uncovering just how much the First Order knew about this mission. “You come here often?”

Navrin flashed you a look of incredulity. He mouthed the question Are you flirting with her? This caused you to scowl at him. What the kriff sort of question was that? A legitimate one, you reasoned, now that you remembered you were using some of Dameron’s moves, his charm.

“They should have killed you when they had the chance,” Phasma said. You took no insult. “In the end, you will be the death of him.”

As if on cue, another ship entered the section of space to your right. A second on your left. They were fighters, these ones not requiring a nearby docking bay like the TIEs. Long range. Not Resistance, nor First Order. Navrin and you turned to look at one another again. The Order of Ren, its two ships were not moving to attack you. They acted as protector, quickly eliminating the four fighters that had previously been toying with your ship. The former Knight of Ren had whispered two names. Other Knights. You placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Apparently death did not do you part,” Navrin said. You smirked a little at his words, at his attempt of being lighthearted in this situation with a topic that was heavy. Your marriage to Kylo Ren was complicated. Navrin, too, had a former relationship with the man as one of his Knights. “I do not know if Kylo will come after the children.”

“We know he won’t kill them. Right now, I’ll take that. Their lives are our focus.”

Now that the two of you were on the same page, you worked together to guesstimate the best set of coordinates to use. A change in itinerary was a necessity. If anyone grew upset over this choice, well, it was better to ask forgiveness than permission when lives were on the line. You told Navrin of a nearby planet that had served as a training ground for you in your early days with the Resistance splinter cell. Having any advantage was of the utmost importance. Kylo Ren’s Knights would pursue you. Even if they did you no physical harm, it was foolish to think that they would simply let you, in other words the children you were transporting, go.

Your ally gave you only a moment to prepare yourself before the ship made the leap. You felt like someone had slugged you; the straps on this transport could use some improvements. Standing, you walked to each of the children in turn to check how they were doing. Most were still scared. That was no surprise. Tears. You awkwardly patted the head of more than one, at a loss for what to do or say. Life was not going to get any less complicated in a standard day. You did not want to offer false hope, but you also did not want to eliminate hope entirely.

“I hope you kids like hiking,” Navrin said. You barked out a laugh. You liked him. His levelheadedness proved the intense training he must have undergone as a Knight of Ren. His Force abilities, whatever they were, those were not anything he could rely upon as Phasma pursued this ship. Those fragging ysalamir. “Prepare to remove the comm unit and scrambler.”

It did not bother you that he was giving orders, nor that what he commanded of you were things that you had already planned to do. Communication between the two of you was important. You stood, instructed the children to remain in their restraints, and grabbed the weaponry that you and Navrin had stowed away. Only two of the passengers would you even consider handing a weapon to. Giving arms to children was not ideal, but neither was dying. Your gaze rested on the eldest. She was a nonhuman. They had all given their names before boarding the shuttle. Those escaped your memory right in that moment. Shaking your head, you did not pass a blaster or blade to her.

Your fingers wormed against the connections that had locked the scrambler in place. Rose had run through this process with you multiple times to ensure you did not damage the small device. She had also instructed you how to attach it properly to the comm unit after it was removed from the ship. It did not weigh much at all. Would not hinder you during the hike, not even if you were put into a position where it became necessary to draw your weapon. Use your weapon, you corrected; you would have the blaster in your hands the entire time. Every second counted.

Exiting hyperspace was just as jarring as breaking through the planet’s atmosphere. Teeth audibly rattled. A few of the younglings sniffled. Three began muffling sobs as their fear deepened. No one demanded nor requested that they silenced themselves. It was wise to allow the children to work through their emotions. Otherwise they would grow hysteric at a time that the enemy was in full pursuit. That would give away the position of whatever camp was set up.

Those thoughts stirred up memories. Blaster backfiring. Shooting him to end his misery as well as to prevent your location from being fully revealed. Watching allies die on the battlefield. Cut down one by one by the red lightsaber that had always been a beacon of terror. Not firing, no opening to kill its owner, which was your mission. Give cover only when your target is down. Give cover only when the monster known as Kylo Ren, Snoke’s greatest enforcer, is not present.

Even during the Rebellion things had been that way. Watching allies die, being a part in their deaths, ensuring there were no leaks...which sometimes meant that those sources were forever silenced.

Children die every day in war, you thought, pain flooding through you. The entire Hosnian System. How many children? How many civilians? So many defenseless beings.

You ran a hand back over the hilt of a blade that you had placed on a beltloop. Wracked your mind in an attempt to remember each and every one of the names of those you were guarding. Bit by bit they did come just as bit by bit the transport shuttle neared the surface of the planet. When you placed a face with the name of the nonhuman female, the Pantoran, you called to her. Aris unstrapped herself and cautiously approached; she was ready to return to her seat at a moment’s notice. This instilled a sense of relief in you as you handed her the blade. Aris made no move to unsheath it, which is something you had expected her to. Instead she gave a nod of understanding. The Pantoran made her way back to her seat without redoing the straps.

Navrin set the ship down and cut the engine. He rose from his seat while telling the children to remain where they were for a little while longer. Both you and he worked to check the compartments that housed ration bars, electronic torches, and fluids. You grabbed up the medkit, handed it off to one of the children, a human male, who had been keeping a levelhead through everything. You distributed the supplies among the children. Both you and Navrin needed to keep yourselves available for battle.

Before leaving the ship to venture further into nature, Navrin stripped the transport of some essentials. This would keep anyone else from finding much use while you were away. Navrin and you ensured that the children were between the two of you, those who could defend themselves more easily, such as Aris, on the outside of the group. Hiding tracks in unison with keeping the passage safe, was not a task easily accomplished with such an entourage. You found yourself not only listening to your surroundings, but looking skyward periodically at a greater frequency than you would have in other cases.

Navrin had been placed in charge of searching for a suitable campground where he would remain with the children. When it came to hand-to-hand combat, he would be able to hold his own much more easily than you could. You would split away from them when a camp was found; you would act as an LDS to keep them safe. Should your location be given away by a missed shot, the blaster fire would alert Navrin that an enemy was in pursuit while also ensuring that said enemy came your way. You took one ration bar from the supplies. Tucked it away into a back pocket before accepting a canteen of water from one of the children. They had been instructed how to behave in a scenario like this before leaving aboard the transport shuttle. All things considered, they were doing well. Aris was taking her role as protector seriously too. She did not fidget needlessly with the weapon you had given to her.

You doubted that she had killed anyone, however you were growing increasingly certain that the Pantoran was no stranger to a battlefield or, at the very least, death.

One of the many supplies that had been grabbed from the ship, one thing that was slowing you down aside from the presence of children, were the blankets that would interfere with thermal scanners. That was the sort of technology the First Order would use to find you. They could then fire from the sky. Send a volley your way. Stars, they would destroy an entire planet without a care just to kill you. The Order of Ren and the First Order had a larger grasp on the galaxy than the Resistance did. They were not working together to snuff out the pockets of Resistance fighters, and yet there it was. The three way war was no less deadly. It barely took any heat off of the Resistance. And now Supreme Leader Hux was purposefully hunting Force sensitives.

These children, you thought, wincing, and adjusted your supplies. Navrin had pointed ahead. He knew precisely where he would be setting up for the night. You nodded in acknowledgement. Directed the younglings to stay on course even as you headed off. Aris took up your former position.

You could still hear them walking when the first ship arrived in orbit. It loomed overhead, growing closer and closer. Breaking atmosphere. The vegetation was rich on this planet, and it would cover them. You continuously told yourself this, giving reassurances that may or may not have been false. The ship was familiar, one of those that had assisted in defending the transport from Phasma. You kept checking for the second to come into view. There was no disappointment to be had. There it was.

The distance between you and the others grew. You had selected a proper outpost, which was not much further ahead. A third ship broke atmosphere as you were adjusting yourself. You threw the blanket that you had taken with you over your body. Prepared your weapon, staring at the third ship through the scope of your blaster. Air escaped your lungs so suddenly that it felt like someone had slugged you. The third ship was also familiar. The ship that Kylo Ren had taken from you. You glowered. There was no necessity for you to wait until the cockpit was visible to know the identity of the pilot. He had his TIE Silencer, and who knew what other ships. Well...maybe Supreme Leader Hux was in possession of the Silencer. You did not know for certain. Either way, his choice to use your ship was to provoke you.

It was difficult to tell if he was attempting to provoke you to anger, or to reach out.

You traced the contours of your former ship. It landed between the two ships from the Knights of Ren. The pair had exited their vessels. Kylo Ren was not far behind. It was Kylo that you feared most. His ability to drag information out of you using the Force. You could only fight that off so much before he would pull the location of the children from your mind.

One of the Knights grabbed out a pair of macrobinoculars then started to scan around their surroundings. The Supreme Leader of the Order of Ren did not wait for his knight to complete this task. Instead Kylo had already begun to walk. His feet were carrying him in your direction. You felt your stomach clench. Stared at him through your scope while remaining under the cover of the blanket. It was not going to do you any good.

I hate the Force, you thought. A half-truth. Your hands were starting to tremble, which made the blaster shake in your grasp. You slipped your finger against the trigger. Firing would do no good. The man was too far. He was blind, but that meant nothing. He would sense it, wouldn’t he? Dameron had told you of how Jakku had gone down.

Sweat gathered at the base of your neck. Your teeth clattered together. A swear then escaped you, and you sucked in your gut. If he could sense you so easily, did that mean that he sensed the children as well? Had it been Rey, you would have known it was due to the bond you had with her. Or the bond Kylo had with her. That made you stop breathing. Consider that Navrin and Kylo may well have some semblance of a Force bond. You maneuvered your weapon to check the locations of the two Knights of Ren. One of them, you noted, had a blaster rifle. Shooting in the Knight's direction held a higher potential of a successful hit than an attempt to harm Kylo Ren.

Firing off a shot would alert Navrin as well as the children. Therein was the dilemma. Chewing on your bottom lip, you rested your forehead on the top of an arm. The grass beneath you had a damp smell.

You breathed as evenly as you could in one final attempt to calm yourself. The plan that you had settled on would not have won any awards. If anything, General Organa would have chastised you for being so reckless. Luke Skywalker would have said...probably something. Who knew? Rey would not have let you go at it alone. Then again, her presence would have pleased Kylo. He still wanted her to be his second; the new Master of the Knights of Ren while he was Supreme Leader of the Order of Ren. She had been for a time. You never once forgot that, nor that together Kylo and Rey had not been a poor team.

In an ideal galaxy, the war would end and we could all come together for peace. That temporary alliance that had existed between Kylo Ren and Rey had been significant. It had instilled in you a new sense of hope. It had helped to heal wounds you had not believed would ever heal. The alliance had allowed you to forgive Kylo Ren for some of the things he had done to you; a forgiveness that was not strictly for him. The ability to forgive those horrors, that had been for you.

Finn would not have been pleased, you thought with a weak smile, at the actions you were taking. Rising from your cover, you worked the blanket over your body like a cloak to prevent it from being lost. Finn would have told you that you were not being wise; and you would have agreed with him, however it would not have changed your mind. The thing about Finn? He would have still come with you. Him and Rey both, the two of them backing you up just as they had the previous time you were all together against the Order of Ren.

The weight of the blaster in your possession was far from foreign. Now that you were on a sort of battlefield, it felt like an extension of yourself. A limb that had been there, that had always been meant to be there.

It would be foolish to believe that Kylo Ren did not wish for the Resistance’s end. He wanted Luke Skywalker, his uncle, to perish. No longer aligned with the First Order, he nevertheless upheld some of its ideology. He was actively targeting the First Order on the basis of it having a stronger arsenal. If it had been anyone else in the Resistance on this mission, they would have long since been dead or captured.

Another foolish thing was to believe that you could defeat two of the Knights of Ren along with Kylo. It would be unwise to assume that a larger ship was not in orbit. Perhaps several.

You paused numerous times, checked Kylo’s position in your scope. He had not stopped walking, not once. He was fast closing the distance that was between the two of you. What struck you was that you would truly be alone with him. That had not happened in...kriff, how long had it been?

Since he had died in your arms.

Even with the makeshift cloak, you were beginning to shiver. The adrenaline pumping through your system made your legs move more quickly. All sounds were drowned out by the pumping of your heart, your pulse in your ears so loud that for a moment you grew dizzy. The lightheadedness returned in waves. Onwards you walked. The Supreme Leader drawing closer, the Knights farther away as they made their own path. The blaster had its settings shifted over to stun although you did not remember consciously making the decision to do this. Regardless, you noticed it one of the times you glanced down. There would be no mercy should you be in a position to fire your weapon. The Knights of Ren or Kylo or maybe all three of them, they would go in for the kill.

Such thoughts were not absent with Kylo Ren in view a mere few yards away. He was reliant upon the Force due to his injury, to having been blinded by Phasma. His blindness did not make you feel any less exposed. Kylo walked forward with purposeful strides. The lightsaber was clipped to his belt. His hand did not once touch the hilt. The man could read your mood, which was more terrifying to you than if he had simply been so confident in his abilities to deflect an attack with little effort at all.

This would be your last chance to fire off a shot that would alert Navrin to the presence of the Knights. Although he had to know already, didn’t he? He would sense them just as they sensed him.

Gritting your teeth together, you tossed your weapon to the ground and stopped walking. Kylo did not halt. He allowed no more than a breath’s worth of distance between your body and his. “You cannot shield them from war. No more than your parents could shield you.” He knew the truths to speak that hurt you the most. You recoiled from him, retreating several steps. His lips parted in a sigh. “Hux will not spare them. Do not fool yourself thinking that you can stash them away and end this.”

A part of you, a rather large portion, wished that you had not disarmed yourself. Kylo Ren placed a hand on the side of your face. You surprised yourself by not flinching at his touch. The glove he wore maintained a barrier. If he touched you flesh to flesh things would be different. He leaned closer. The tip of his nose caressed yours. The whisper of your name from those lips caused your knees to give out. He surged forward, catching you, kissing you. A cruel kindness. Your hands grabbed onto his upper arms. Fingertips dug into the material of his shirt and the skin underneath. One kissed collapsed into a second. You were not pushing him away. Your mouth was submitting to his, lips parting and allowing his tongue in.

“Others would sell them out to Hux.” Yet another painful moment of honesty. Things that you did not want to hear. Kylo was not holding his blows with you, and this dose of reality had you on your knees.The thing was, he knelt down with you. “They require proper training and protection. The Resistance has seen what Hux is capable of.”

You were so bare, so naked. Clothes strewn around your body and him on top of you. Inside of you. You wrapped your legs around his waist, held tightly onto his shoulders, and peered put that face. Those sightless eyes were on your mouth. It took you a bit to realize that you were muttering nonsense between each thrust. He slowed his pace. The languid, lazy rolling of his hips allowing you to truly feel him inside of you. Stretching you. Kylo Ren set two fingers in your mouth, just the very tips of them, and you bit down on his glove. He would not strip himself completely, would not bare himself entirely.

“I always lose with you,” you whispered. Above you, the man heaved a sigh. He started to withdraw. You moved faster than you had since arriving in front of him. “Wait.”

“We exist outside of each other now.” You nodded, accepting this. Then contradicted him: sometimes...sometimes you were still Tooke. That would always be a part of you, a part of you that you were slowly accepting and coming to love for all its faults. “Is this corrosive?”

“I won’t let you consume me.” Your mouth and his meeting. This time he did not push for you to submit. The kisses were light. Not entirely gentle, no.

Kylo Ren began to move within you again. You buried your face in the crook of his neck. Not watching. Seeing only darkness and shadows. Feeling him, focusing on that sensation. The way your bodies worked together. The ways in which it was not a fight. This temporary, shaky alliance. This moment between husband and wife; the parts of your life that warred with one another marrying for a cause. The cause of fleeting peace. The cause of comfort despite this being a battle you had lost. A quiet declaration that he was not doing this to hurt you, that this was nothing personal.

How was this mercy not breaking you? Could it even be called mercy?

You shoved aside those thoughts. “Sometimes I still think of what we were versus what we could have been.” The uttered me too gripped your heart.

He withdrew until the head of his erection skimmed your inner lips. You held your breath in anticipation. Kylo moved again, reentering you, fully sheathing himself inside of you. You felt yourself clench around him. You began to nibble on his neck after nuzzling him enough that the material he wore did not block the skin. One of his hands was one your chest. Pinching your nipple roughly, sending a sharp signal of pain that dissipated as he loosened his hold. Your stomach did a flip. You grabbed for his other hand, removed its glove. Then led the limb nearer, pressing your mouth against his wrist. You could feel his pulse under your tongue as you began to suckle it.

“Is this the sort of galaxy you’ve been wanting?” you asked before kissing his fingertips.

He slid two of them into your mouth and pressed down on your tongue to still it. “I cannot leave these children to Skywalker. Should Rey choose to join me again, I would trust her.” The most frustrating part was that you could not blame him, not entirely. From what he had said, what Rey had told you...Leia...Luke himself…

“Then tell me where you’ll have them.”

He chuckled. He grasped your right leg and hooked it over his shoulder. You threw back your head, tears of pleasure prickling at your eyes as delicious pressure began to build within you. You felt so hot. Your chest tight. You could hear him moving in and out of you, the wet sounds so obscene that they made your orgasm crash over you. Sound was distorted all around you. Kylo Ren was saying something. You did not know what. Just heard the deep sound of his voice. Then felt him cumming inside of you.

He maneuvered you so that you were on your hands and knees. Your back against his front. His body eclipsing yours. Kylo bit at the back of your neck, albeit not in a way that caused you much pain. It sent tendrils of heat through you. Your sensitive nerves were on edge.

“Oh…”

Realizing what he was doing did nothing to give you the strength to say or do anything. The heel of one hand was against your pussy, his fingers smearing your cum back and forth, coating your clitoris. You jumped at the sensation.

“If she turns, I will tell her… Or you can come.”

“I…” He chuckled deeply. You whimpered, suddenly unsure what he had actually said. You can come or you can cum. Or was it both? His fingers sliding back and forth.

“I am going to devour you. If you aren’t careful, you’ll enjoy it.”

Wasn’t that what he had said to you before? Those thoughts drowned out by your second orgasm, which sapped the last of your strength. His embrace was the only thing keeping you from falling.

“The First Order is on their way. I can sense...a void. Soon my powers will be weakened, just as before.” The children, you thought, would also be powerless. “You came to bargain with me.” A nod. “Knowing I will not give up the children.” Another nod. “What?”

“I want you to kill Phasma.” Not that he hadn’t already been planning to. Kylo Ren hummed in thought. He turned you, helping you to find a comfortable position. You began to pull back on your clothes. “The First Order has more ships than you do. You have more ships than the Resistance does. You could easily pick us off, but you aren’t a fool. So kill Phasma. You’re taking these children from me… Phasma would kill them sooner than Hux would. If he believed he could make use of them, he would use Force sensitives. It’s Phasma who’s most dangerous.”

“I will send the Resistance proof of her death...and the children will remain unharmed.”

This was not a battle that you could have won. Yet you had altered your mission in some respects. Keep the children alive...but leave them with Kylo Ren. They were old enough, some of them, to have seen the actions of the First Order and Order of Ren. There was a chance they would rebel against the Supreme Leader…

“Let me see them off.” He said your name, a warning. “I want them to live, Kylo. Please. I don’t want them to fight you… I mean… I do. But…”

“I know.” You nodded, looking at his face and waiting. Kylo pulled a comm device out, contacting the two Knights that he had brought with him. “Disarm. Prisoners only. No deaths.” You twisted to stare in the direction that Navrin was hiding with the children. “I knew you would fight if I did not come.”

This was a scenario that Navrin and you had briefly discussed. Should you fail to give a signal and the Knights show up, he would retaliate only. Otherwise it was a surrender. The lives of the children, that was what the pair of you had signed on to protect.

“You trained to kill me here.” You returned your attention to him, eyes running up and down his body. “You chose this location for a reason… Oh.” He snorted. “Kill Phasma.” His lips twisted into a cruel smirk. “I will contact my ship. The children will not be harmed in this death trap. Are you ready to play the role of bait?”

“Yes.”

#kylo ren x reader #kylo x reader #kylo ren imagine #kylo ren smut #three blind tooke #elmidolfanfic #death is an art

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botslayer · 5 years ago

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Top Ten games of the 2010′s

This trend seems to be doing the rounds at the moment and seeing as I’ve been gaming for about as long as I can remember, It just feels right. So, let’s get into it. But first, worth saying: These aren't really in any specific order, it's just the games I've personally had the most fun with overall, but it's pretty hard to decide what the hard numbers on things you enjoy for different reasons are if that makes any sense. 10. The 2010's weren't exactly the best time for anyone, I think. For me they were a slog of finding myself and learning things I wish I didn't. Amid all those things I wanted some levity. The world needs something and stupid. We got a lot of it ion 2013 but I feel like we could have used it scattered around a bit more. In that spirit, allow me to show you one hell of a pick me up:

Saints Row 4

Saints Row 4 does not give a fuck. It is aggressively demonstrating that the entire time you play. It doesn't care in the slightest what you think or why, It just wants to show you cool, if juvenile, and interesting, if weird shit. It's the finer points of Ratchet and Clank's arsenal, SR3's humor, And superpowers that genuinely put Prototype and Infamous in a blender and tell you to go ape shit with them. The soundtrack isn't top shelf, it's the roof of the building the shelf is in. Saints Row Two had a better story overall but SR Four's was just plain fun and a solid enough story to still be invested.

The DLC was just as irreverent and madcap, Featuring everything from an evil Santa Clause to evil Gimps on Game of thrones chairs made of dildos Or Tropey-ass costumes and weapon reskins that I'd be genuinely surprised the game dev didn't get sued over. It has earned its place in my top 10 and I will die by that decision.

2016 saw the advent of a new genre. They blended TF2 and MOBAs, and we got hero shooters in their first AAA forms, Overwatch and Battleborn. But neither of these games is on this list, much as I liked them. Partly because the whole time, I kept thinking of one simple question: "Why do I keep thinking of...?"

Anarchy Reigns

Anarchy Reigns is my favorite Platinum game. Full Stop. The Story mode is interesting and has genuinely good character moments, the characters themselves are completely mental, ranging from a mercenary with a bionic cat leg that secretly has a gun built into it to a giant cyborg bull-man with a jet-powered hammer. The soundtrack is mostly angry hip-hop, making every song a banger and fittingly speedy for things like random bombing runs from jet fighters that come from absolutely nowhere.

There are giant monsters, cars with mounted flame throwers, giant robots, and the online is still pretty sweet because even when abandoned, loading it up with bots still rules. I regularly have more fun with this than I ever did with Overwatch, and I don't care how insane that sounds.

Some games want to make you feel something and fail. Some games make you feel some things accidentally, for example, a desperate need to laugh. This game made me feel like a human blender. Like a Chthonic god of mangled flesh and raw destructive power. Nyarlathotep ain't got nothing on me. I speak, of course, of...

[Prototype] 2

There's no end to the absolute destruction you feel like you're causing in this game. It feels more fluid than the first, the main character is a pinch more relatable, and all the body horror, superpowers, zombie hordes, and big old monsters make for some of the most memorable and fun moments and fights in gaming. The DLC is also pretty solid, adding new fun side challenges, and new powers and weapons that elevate you from "Flesh god" to "Screw physics, I made them" Omnipotent. Best god/monster simulation of all time.

Sometimes some games are at an honest tie in your mind. Be it that you like them for essentially the same reasons, or for completely different reasons, but the overall total joy or entertainment they bring is roughly equivalent. Here, we have a case of the former:

Furi/Cuphead

Both games have a tight focus on giving players a unique, boss-centric challenge, both have interesting, somewhat minimal narratives, and both are absolute eye candy.

Furi has a more "Samurai Jack" Quality to me. A complete badass on a relatively simple quest with a somewhat minimalistic art style learning some things as he goes.

Cuphead on the other hand, nails that rubber hose animation style, and the fun levity of such animations while still making the player's ability to interact with the world damn impactful and fun.

They share a spot in my soul, games I love everything about but will never be able to finish. Hats off to both dev teams.

Now here we have another tie. Mostly because the games are so close together, they need to be evaluated more or less as one product IMO, not enough changed for me to consider them separate games, fortunately, that is the furthest thing from an insult it can be in this situation. I present to you, my next pick(s).

Costume Quest 1/2

Now, This might seem pretty random considering my other picks, but honestly, I love Halloween, I love creative madness, I love subversion, I love good characters, and I love cool action, these games have all these things by the bucketload.

The first game is a wild ride through Halloween in multiple very lively locations and the second, slightly confusing as it is, is pretty awesome for the things it introduces, including time travel. Other elements, like the battle stamps, the truly epic forms of everything in the fights, The ability to customize your costumes, etc. they blur together in a pretty big way, but again, there's not a thing wrong with that when both games rock like crystal candy.

Now, if you hadn't noticed, all of the games on this list have had some hard action at their core, and while I don't HATE calmer games, a lot of the time, so many are kinda dull to me in that with the exception of easter eggs of some sort, most farming sims, for example, just have you doing normal farm stuff with very few twists, may as well start a real farm in that case. My most chill entry is a game that tosses that to one side, asks you to grab a suck cannon, and start harvesting gelatinous monster poop.

Slime Rancher

While you don't spend a lot of time actually interacting with other characters, they just talk at you, the story of the game is pretty effective, the player character of Beatrix has left Earth for a simpler life of Slime Ranching, which entails the raising of alien crops, delightfully derpy and colorful chickens, and going all around in an attempt to farm new breeds of slime for their genetic material to sell off or trade-in for the creation of gadgets while being surrounded by a cast of interesting characters. It's all very wholesome family fun.

The game looks great, has great ideas, and is genuinely the best farming game I have ever played. @ me all you want.

The 80's are almost fetishized nowadays. Given all the property reboots, games that go for the vibe and aesthetic of the time, etc. It almost seems as though the eighties vibe train ain't gonna stop rolling any time soon. But we owe it to ourselves to remember the first big swipe of madcap neon-colored actiony B-movie bullshit and how mind-meltingly epic it was. Ladies, Gents, and whatever else, I present:

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Blood Dragon's story is relatively simple, you play Sargent Rex "Power" Colt (A name said in full so many times I thought his last name was "Powercolt" for the longest time), a former "Omega force" cyborg. Rex and his friend "Spider" were sent into a secret island base to investigate the supposed defection and treachery of their old commander, Ike Sloan. It turns out he has gone rogue and taken an army of "Mark 5" Omegaforce cyber-soldiers with him. What follows is a long story of betrayal, science fiction of the highest nonsensical level, comedy, and brilliantly cathartic action.

The collectibles range from data on animals, to research notes from a scientist, to literal VHS cassette tapes that have full descriptions of movies that I would legitimately watch if I could. "You may now kill the brides" is not a real film and I am angry for every day that that is true. Anyway, play Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, I dunno if it's on PS4 but it's one game I'd buy a new/old console for.

A lot of superhero games NEED to railroad you. Your goals MUST be to save the lives of the people and help the weak and all that. But one dev asked the simple question: "What if it didn't?" "What if the player chose how to use their power? What if the player could be as evil or as good as they damn well pleased?" One game gave you the powers of thunder and lightning and asked what you'd do with it. It's sequel asked you the same, but against more... interesting forces.

InFamous 2

InFamous 2 is a game about making choices, just like the first one, also just like the first one, it can have an effect on gameplay. That effect went from "What does this particular power do in this allignment?" To "Which new set of NEW powers would you like?" The forces of the last game went from “Three flavors of gun-toting whackos” To “Possibly an allegory for the Klan, Swamp monsters, and Ice-powered super soldiers.”

This was, and still is, the best game in the whole series, The powers felt distinct from anything else and still do, the story is solid as a rock, and the enemy types were still varied enough to be interesting, I miss the Reapers from the first game, but that's about it. Everything else was a massive step up. If you have something that can run it, play it.

Action is something I think we can all appreciate on some level. We can understand when it does or does not work, we can understand when we do or do not like how it feels when we are the ones partaking in it. EX: Any schlep can tell you when the weapons in your game lack impact, or when your character moves too slow for the game to be fun. The following game is something I can't say anything of the sort about. And it's kind of like Wolfenstein, when you have enemies this bad, who the hell cares how many you kill?

Doom 2016

Y'all are lying if you say you didn't expect this one. It's DOOM 2016. This game is made of hate and fuck. AND I LOVE IT. You move so fast, you may as well be half cheetah and half sports car. You slaughter the dregs of hell by the dozens and even the biggest, baddest things this game throws at you can be beaten with the starting pistol if you have the stones for it. It looks amazing graphically, the demons all look appropriately threatening, and even the Multiplayer is a great deal of fun in my book.

Something worth noting: The story presented by default is pretty barebones, but that's where supplementary material fills in the gaps, the difference between supplementary material in most games and supplementary material here is the material is till IN THE GAME. You're free to ignore most of the plot as it happens around you, and even interesting tidbits of the lore like how certain demons function. Not only are these things missable collectibles, prompting continued play to find them, they are also pretty interesting reads. So yeah, just about everything you could want in a sequel/remake, builds the on lore and gameplay very organically.

And here we are, the last game I'd put in this category. An entire decade, and here, we end on the last game that left such an impact I'd put it in my top ten. But first, let's talk about expectations and delivery: When you say a game is coming out, there are certain expectations you have for gameplay, EX: I say "Ratchet and Clank" and you expect a TPS with platforming elements and crazy guns. I say "Gears of War" and people expect something to do with lumbering about in big armor, dismembering things with a chainsaw gun and otherwise shooting them to paste. We might also expect changes to things, better graphics, innovations in grenade variety, something as that franchise goes on.

After the last game in this series was released, there were tons of people who felt let down and disappointed by it. Then they released the still somewhat disappointing special edition of it. They were both still fun, but neither really felt like the full next step in the series. After a failed reboot, they returned to the original story and the lot of us rejoiced. And when it finally came out? It was a step up in most, if not, all regards, to its predecessors. You know what this last one is. Please, give a warm round of applause to:

Devil May Cry 5

A game that was not only a return to form, but a major escalation in gameplay for one character, and a new style of gameplay all together by way of yet another new character. It didn’t exactly hurt that the story kicked ten kinds of ass and that the game looked spectacular in both the design of everything and the actual graphical fidelity.DMC 5 is, like DOOM, Like InFamous 2, Like [PROTOTYPE] 2, everything you want in a good sequel. It built very well on already solid foundations and it was generally just a fun, slightly goofy, massively stylish, and ultra badass ride. I recommend this, and all these games, to anyone.Good night everyone, have a great 2020. And the rest of the decade, for that matter.

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teaatfivejdatfour-blog · 4 years ago

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How to Improve Your Health

Why is preserving our health so important? For starters, scientific studies have proven that individuals who lead a healthy lifestyle are more likely to live longer. As if the longer life span is not a powerful enough incentive, there are consequences for not adhering to the healthy lifestyle. Sicknesses, ailments, and even body aches are the very frequent symptoms, and they also signify that you haven't kept your body in tune.

Often times we neglect our health, particularly in today's fast paced work world. We work day in and day out, but we never realize that we're forgetting the number one important thing in our life: our health. We explicitly tie health to our own happiness, but our health plays a huge part in it.

If you wish to improve your health, there are lots of methods to do so. First is active exercise. It might be jogging, swimming, sports, or even yoga and dancing. So long as your body is moving, it's working! Does exercise help tone your muscles, but in addition, it enables your internal system to operate properly.

Having a consistent workout regimen ensures your body is healthy and in shape. Exercising is important because a powerful body develops a strong immune system. Consider it as creating a human shield against germs and illnesses. Working out is a surefire way to enhance your healthy lifestyle.

Second would be to eat a balanced and healthy diet. That includes all of the different food groups, in addition to regular intakes. Never forget to eat a meal in the morning, so your body can do the job properly for the remainder of the day!

A balanced meal is made up of not only eating one of the various food groups, but also the perfect quantities at regular time intervals. It's essential to eat at least three meals each day, including breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Food keeps your mind energized and your physiological functions .

Third is to change your daily habits, like sleeping early and rising early. You might not believe these little habits of yours make a difference in the long term, but they are important!

By way of instance, our body requires a certain amount of sleep so as to feel energized on the following day. Experts recommend approximately seven to eight hours of sleep daily. Having a comfortable sleeping environment is also crucial for building up rest. It may be a good idea to check into purchasing the ideal cushions and beds to ensure the most acceptable rest possible.

Additionally, your psychological make-up is important to bettering your psychological health lifestyle. Possessing a strong circle of family and friends will surely be beneficial during times of stress, pressure, and catastrophe. Since stress requires a tow in your physical body, do not place too much unnecessary pressure on yourself.

The best way to better your health is through a well-developed combination of the above elements. Provided that you eat healthily, exercise regularly, and stay brightly. . .you are on your way to a long and prosperous life!

How To Begin The Quest For Ultimate Health And Wellness

The journey to attain supreme health and wellness starts with building a lifestyle that supports you. A health and wellness oriented lifestyle is constructed by creating healthy habits and decisions part of your everyday routines.You don't need to completely overhaul your whole life all at once. These modifications can be made gradually.

Physical Fitness

The United States Department of Health and Human Services released the first Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans in 2008. It recommends 30 minutes of moderate aerobic activity a minimum of two hours and 30 minutes weekly for adults ages 18 to 64 years. Strength training for all the significant body parts,legs, hips, arms, shoulders, stomach, back and torso is recommended at least twice per week.

If you're not already physically active, integrating fitness activities into your daily life doesn't have to pose a significant challenge. A wide assortment of physical activities meet the guidelines. Examples of moderate physical activity include dancing, brisk walking, bike riding and much more.

Bear in mind, 30 minutes of moderate activity provides the minimum needed to get health benefits.

To successfully incorporate physical fitness activities to your daily life, make them part of your everyday schedule. Set aside time in your daily planner and include a reminder to the event in your telephone or watch. The main things you can do would be appear for the activity and carry out some amount of physical activity. Even if it does not equal the entire 30 minutes, you are still building the practice of physical activity.

Keys to Success:

• Start with an activity you will enjoy.

• If you're a social person, join an exercise group or work out with friends.

• Remember every little bit counts. If you exercise for 20 minutes twice daily or in 10 minute increments during the day, you are able to satisfy with the requirement of two hours and 30 minutes each week around your schedule.

Diet

Together with physical fitness, ultimate health and health hinges on a healthy and balanced diet. Individuals who eat well experience many different health benefits, better weight maintenance, lower odds of developing diabetes or heart disease and reduced cases of illness. According to the 2010 dilemma of Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a healthy diet includes significant amounts of fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy, lean proteins and unrefined grains. The recommendations also suggest lowering sodium, added sugars, trans fat, saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet.

Before you look to cut things from your diet, focus on incorporating healthy alternatives to your snacks and meals. Take a proactive positive attitude as you make changes to what you eat. Drink a non-carbonated beverage rather than a soda or pop; you could choose unsweetened herbal tea that still supplies flavor, lemon water or plain water. Select brown rice rather than white rice with your foods. Just like with exercise, little changes add up to a complete transition to a more healthful lifestyle.

Keys to Success:

• Choose a couple of little changes to incorporate into your diet monthly.

• Experiment. Eating healthy should be pleasurable for you to make it a part of your lifestyle. Eat various foods and an assortment of approaches to prepare them and enjoy the ones you prefer.

• make certain to keep your everyday menu diverse so you do not get bored with your food choices and move off track.

Mind-Body Connection

Our emotional state can influence our food choices, our level of physical activity and our ability to keep positive social engagement. Foods high in fat and sugar meet the joy and reward centers in our brains.

If we're stressed or unhappy, a lot people reach for rich foods to make ourselves feel better. Occasionally this is a conscious choice; many times it isn't. Additionally, feeling angry, unhappy or depressed saps energy, which makes it more challenging to exercise or pursue some other physical activity; we simply don't feel like it.

There are a number of methods to combat this particular cycle. Physical activities like yoga, pilates, tai chi and several others especially cultivate a healthy mind-body link for professionals. All these activities use movement attached to breath awareness to calm and focus the brain and the nervous system.

Yoga includes breathing exercises and meditation too. These activities build fitness and relieve stress. Some mind-body activities, breathing exercises, meditation and visualization, don't involve whole body motion; they focus on channeling psychological activity and relieving anxiety.

It's important to keep the body healthy and the mind in a state of balance to experience a feeling of well-being. Equilibrium does not mean that you become an automaton. It simply means you don't experience unrealistic highs or painful lows (depression). Being tempered makes it much easier to take care of stress, adapt to change and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Keys to Success:

• Pick a mind-body action to include in your schedule that suits your lifestyle and lifestyle.

• Exercise it consistently for the best results.

Make It A Habit

It takes 21 to 30 days of constant application to produce a simple action a custom. More intricate accomplishments like establishing a workout regimen, daily meditation and dietary changes can take considerably longer.

The rate of achievement for more intricate changes can be quite variable; don't end your search for ultimate health and health if you aren't seeing immediate results. The secret to changing established customs and acquiring new ones is consistency and persistence. You can reach your objective!

#health #health and wellness #healthy habits #healthy lifestyle

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scripttorture · 6 years ago

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(pt 1 of 2) So I've got a character (A) that gets snagged by this group of mercenaries/assassins in the hope of drawing out this other character (B) they've been trying to kill. B is telepathic, so the group is hoping that by torturing A he'll have to come and save her. It doesn't work, and A goes through about three days of torture (beatings, mostly) before she's rescued by another character, C.

(pt 2 of 2) C and A are from different races that are mortal enemies, but C saves A because torture is something he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy. Granted, he does the bare minimum to save her, but could that sort of thing be enough to shake A's firmly held beliefs about C's whole race? Secondly, how do I patch things up between A and B? I've got a lot of people being unreasonable, especially in the short term, but I'm not sure how reconciliation should go, since A is mad and B is ashamed.

Whenit comes to strongly held beliefs I don’t think there are many firmanswers.

Evidencealone generally doesn’tshake our beliefs and we have a marked tendency to pick and choosethe evidence we cite, emphasising and giving more weight to thingsthat support what we believe. We do this even when we’re aware ofthis effect. It seems to be a universally human trait.

Butevidence coupled with emotional appeals canchange people’s minds. People can also gradually change over time.

Thekey word here is ‘can’. It is possible.That doesn’t mean it happens every time.

Thingslike de-radicalisation programs domake a measurable difference in the broad sense. But they don’treach everyone they interact with.

Andthe things which trigger a change of heart are not always fastacting. They can be things that gnaw at a person over a course ofyears, gradually prompting them to shift their stance.

Essentiallyyou could choose to take this either way. You could have A’s viewof C’s people changing, either abruptly or gradually. But you couldalso have A write the incident off as an exception to the rule orotherwise dismiss it. Either response can happen in real life.

Let’sstep back from the success rates of organisations like After Hate fora moment and address this as writers.

Ifyou wantA to have a massive change of heart then however quick the change itcan’t feel like it comes out of nowhere. The readers have tounderstand the process A goes through emotionally.

Whichmeans the reason behind this has to be more than C’s actions: itneeds to be the feelings and thoughts those actions prompt in A.Otherwise the change is going to come across emotionally flat.

ShowA struggling with these thoughts and feelings, swinging betweendoubting what they were taught and what they experienced. Don’t betempted to make this change easy and don’t be afraid to show Afalling back on old, toxic patterns occasionally.

Movingon from these sorts of hateful idea isn’t easy. It means aconcerted choice every day to address your own toxicity and dedicateyourself to being a better person.

Thatsort of introspection, judgement and emotional work is always inprogress. People often slide back a little even if they’re makingprogress over all. That isn’t unusual.

AndI honestly think that this change will read better if it involvessome internal struggle. The best way to present that will vary withhow you write. If it’s from A’s point of view you can show it asis. You might be able to work it in to conversation with C.

Youmight find having B pick up on it works as well, because that thengives you a way to tie these separate sub-plots together. It mightwell be easier for A and B to argue about how A feels about C/C’speople then it is for them to address their problems with each other.

Whichleads us to A and B’s relationship.

HonestlyI think this is something you should be tailoring to the charactersbecause the ‘right’ answer is going to vary with the individualsinvolved. It might be helpful to unpack some ‘logical knowledge’vs ‘emotional assumptions’ on the part of both characters though.

Let’sstart with A.

NowA probably knowsthat rescuing her wasn’t just a question of skill or bravery. Arescue mission is a difficult and risky prospect, highly likely tofail and extremely rare in reality.

She’dknow that B would find it difficult to rescue A. If B doesn’t havean organisation backing them up then a rescue would have been almostimpossible to pull off successfully.

She’dknow that a rescue attempt could result in B being captured andtortured too. She’d know that an unsuccessful rescue attempt couldeasily lead to A herself being killed.

AdditionallyA would also be aware that torture was warping her perception of theworld. A would probably not always be awareof where She was being held or many of the details of herimprisonment.

Ifall B has to go on for a rescue mission is A’s thoughts then A mustknow that B would have had trouble finding her.

Awould also know that the more B connected with A’s mind the moreimpaired B would be. Because B would also be experiencing thedisorientation, confusion and delirium the pain of torture causes.This sort of confused thinking would leak through and create animpairment even if B couldn’t experience A’s pain.

Bwould also know, logically, all the reasons they couldn’tpractically have rescued A.

Bwould be in the unfortunate position of having a second-handexperience of A’s trauma throughout. The threat of torture is veryreal here. It’s immediate. B’s fear of that is legitimate andshouldn’t be dismissed.

Butthat logic doesn’t trump the emotional side of all this.

Andthe emotional side is that B probably feels like they let A down. Aprobably feel betrayed and hurt and abandoned. They bothprobably feel isolated from each other and like it’s harder totalk.

Neitherof these sets of feelings are logical or rational. But there’s anextent to which that doesn’t matter.

Ithink the best way to address it is directly. Which doesn’t providean easy resolution.

Thething is- most torture victims don’texpect to be rescued. They are not in a position to…. think there’sany possibility of rescue. A’s position here is unusual and thatcomes in part from her being privileged enough to know powerfulpeople. Contact with other survivors might help A realise this andprocess a little of how she feels emotionally. It might help heremotionally accept that the expectations she had of B wereunreasonable.

Havingthem talk about it, the reasons why A expected something and thereasons B couldn’t provide it is an important first step. But thisisn’t something that’s going to resolve overnight. Oneconversation, even if they do listen and understand each other, isn’tgoing to resolve everything.

OnA’s side it’s a case of rebuilding trust. I think that’s ofteneasier to write because we see so many examples of it in literature:trust lost and rebuilt. It’s something that’s best built upslowly over time with a lot of actions on B’s part rather than withsome kind of ‘Big Damn Heroes’ moment.

Agood starting point would probably be helping A with her recovery.Consistent help with the little things she’s struggling with (whichinitially may include eating, getting dressed and moving about) wouldgo a long way.

Shemight not forgive B quickly or at all. She may stop relying on B toprotect her. But care is important too. It’s possible to trustsomeone with some things, some aspects of life and not others.

Partof this depends on how deep you want their reconciliation to go. It’sperfectly possible for them to completely rebuild their relationshipso it’s just as strong as before, but it would take more work thenrebuilding something shallower.

Ithink in some ways B’s side of this emotional problem is harder. Acan meet other torture or trauma survivors and learn that theexpectation of rescue is a fantasy out of most people’s reach. Shecan gradually come to trust B again if they both communicate honestlyand B takes the time to try and care for her, to try and build thatfriendship back.

ButI get the impression B has lost their trust in themselves and that’sa lot harder to regain.

Angerruns out of steam eventually. And sick angry people still need to eator help getting out of bed.

Shamecan eat at someone for the rest of their life.

Myhonest instinct is that if these were real people they’d both needtherapy. A lot of therapy. And while that’s not something that wecan work in to every setting emotional support definitely is.

Bis going to have to forgive themselves for what happened. A big partof that means accepting their own powerlessness in this situation,which is a terrifying thing. It create a sort of emotional push-pulleffect, forgiving themselves means accepting something incrediblyfrightening so it’s easier to avoid those feelings and hold on toarrogance.

Itcan sometimes be easier to tell ourselves we’re cowards or badpeople then it is to accept our own limits.

EarningA’s trust again may not necessarily combat these feelings, B mightcontinue to feel unworthy of that trust.

Thereare a lot of ways to write a set up like this convincingly and well.I think you’ll get the best results by trying to tie thecharacters’ progress to both the overall story and the charactersas individuals.

They’reprobably going to go mess up a few times. They’re probably going toheal at different rates and be ready for different things atdifferent times. Try to be aware of how other things that arehappening in the narrative might effect the characters emotionally.Because the other things going on in their lives could be useful toprompt this kind of emotional growth.

WhenI’m trying to reconcile characters I often try to think about whatthe root of the problem is. It’s often not what the characters areexpressing or consciously aware of as the ‘problem’.

Inthis case I’d guess that it’s ideas of safety and security on A’spart and ideas of duty and bravery on B’s. Those ideas are thingsall of us can understand but the ways they’re expressed areparticular to your characters.

Ihope that helps. :)

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#tw torture #writing victims #writing carers #writing witnesses #effects of torture #torture and belief #torture and relationships #Anonymous

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doomedandstoned · 6 years ago

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Portland’s TROLL Unveil First Sounds from Astounding New LP ‘Legend Master’

~By Billy Goate~

Photos by Stephanie Savenkoff

I can tell you how excited I am to share this new music with you by Portland, Oregon's TROLL. I've been a big believer in this band from before they had a singer, describing them as Rip City's answer to Elder. I was the first to film them and have had the privilege of capturing their charismatic performances with frontman Rainbo several times since. The last time, it was after TROLL had released their very well received eponymous debut and they were airing new material. I thought it was absolutely brilliant, enthusiastically sharing one song in particular on social media, which at the time was called "Bridges of the Holy/Tunnels of the Damned." When I found out that Doomed & Stoned would be giving the formal debut of the new song, now titled "Legend Master, Book I: Proverbs of Hell," I practically flipped.

'Legend Master' (2019) is without doubt TROLL's most brilliant effort to date. John Rainbo (vox), Wayne Boucher (bass), Lou VanLanning (guitar), and Ryan Koger (drums) have simply outdone themselves with these five hefty doomers, beginning with "Flight of the Dragonship." I’ve heard the guys perform this encore several times, but never envisioned it playing the introduction. Suffice it to say, it works -- even if it will take a few spins for me to adjust to thinking of it this way.

From this impressive opener, we transition into an emotional two-parter, the album's namesake “Legend Master,” which we'll all get to hear the first chapter of today. Its expansive, rhapsodic character gives it a most epic vibe. Rainbo’s vocals bear the influence of early Candlemass and the riffs are absolutely golden. In fact, I can envision many of you spinning this record on a Sunday morning during a wake ‘n’ bake (or without, if you prefer), with your hair sprawled out on the living room floor, getting totally lost in the cinematic quality of the storytelling.

This takes us through “The Door,” where we bear witness to some of the most poetic material heard this side of Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy. I really love how Rainbo's vocals are layered at critical junctures in the singing. Having heard this pulled off equally well without it, I am happy to see the band taking some creative risks in studio. It’s my absolute favorite of the album and may, in fact, be the best song I’ve heard in many years. Some may feel it is the conclusion to the album, as least it has a very "ultimate" feel about it.

At last we reach "Yaulzcan Mountain," which was the only song of the album I don't remember the band auditing live (it may have been a very early version if I've heard it). There’s a very sanguine feel to the first half of the song, as the protagonist sings exaltedly of shedding this mortal coil and flying away. Then the tempo quickens and we are off to a riff-driven ascension into Elysian Fields, as the curtains close.

The word "regal" was used in the press release for the new record and I have to agree that it is a fine choice here. Though the band is unquestionably rooted still in the fuzzy, low-end stoner-doom sound of their previous album, I lost consciousness of genres altogether while listening, swept away in the grand fantasy of it all. TROLL’s instincts for songcraft continue to impress in Legend Master. In fact, each of these tracks could stand on their own instrumentally, yet the vocals take them to a new level of grandiosity altogether. Regardless of how you describe it, one thing is certain: Legend Master is in a league of its own.

If you're ready to do a deep dive into the lore behind the band's sophomore record, be sure to check out my interview with Rainbo below. Late last summer, I had the privilege of getting into a long conversation with him at a cafe in Salem, Oregon as evening waned into night. I can tell you that despite how you may perceive him from public performances, Rainbo is a god damned intellectual and exchanging words with him always opens up a dozen new rabbit trails for me to pursue later on. Troll does such an admirable job throughout the record of weaving fascinating tie-ins with legend and literature alike, while continuing to develop an imaginative new world to absorb listeners.

Troll's new album 'Legend Master' (2019) comes out on vinyl, cassette, and CD via Shadow Kingdom Records on April 12th and today, we're giving you a first listen. If you dig the single, you can get it here and pre-order the album here.

Give ear...

Solemn As the grave, Ghastly hand Behold me

Walk alone With my shade Spiral eye goddess Awake!

Through these days, beyond years I wept gold and silver tears Your face was so beautiful And your kiss (flesh), divine Come and sit By the river, once more, by the river...

Through the ages My book, it will tell It breaks my heart to know You're going to hell...

Interview with TROLL's Rainbo

How has the band grown since the first album was released? What are your relationships like, has it gotten easier to make music together? Do you sense an overall distinctive style is cementing in your compositions?

For Troll, it hasn't been easy to sustain the burst of attention that came our way unexpectedly after the release of our debut album. We had some mild hopes and expectations, but we weren't prepared both for the intensity and excitement that greeted our album and our live performances- the community embraced us with almost no external promotion aside from reviews on websites that enjoyed our work. We hadn't prepared things like merchandising, tour plans, or any of the basic sustaining functions of a band, so we tried to take what came us, but mainly we were reacting rather than being proactive.

We threw ourselves into making this second record because we knew the songs were a grander form of doom, that these compositions were more indicative of our talents and where we were headed as a band. But although we seemed to turn out the recordings fairly quickly (recording for Legend Master wrapped in October 2017, only a year after our debut was released), unforeseen delays, internal miscommunication within the band, and miscommunications between the band and our label ended up causing a totally unneeded delay in the tracks being sent to the vinyl press, essentially stalling Troll through all of 2018. Because of that delay, the band has had to find strength in our desire to create unique and powerful heavy music, and we're now well into the process of developing the music and themes for the third album, the last in the trilogy detailing the doomed no-name Troll's cycle of fate.

We are stronger together now, and more comfortable on stage, almost as if during our unforced hiatus we've been training Rocky-style for this moment of return. Our mission is pure epic doom, no punches pulled, and our goal is perfection of our progressive combination of grooves, melodies, and memorable choruses. We aren't trying to be like any other band, we want to be a heavier, more powerful Troll.

Tell us the background on the new album thematically -- what's the lyrical thread running through each song and is there a link to your previous material?

To understand Legend Master thematically it's necessary to know at least a synopsis of the debut album's story arc. Troll I lyrically follows a fairly defined origin-story narrative, introducing a malevolent wizard figure who conjures the unnamed Troll out of mushroom root in an ostensible attempt to use the Troll to thwart his enemy, a witch of some great power. The Troll gains strength but is disillusioned with his newfound powers, as he can see that neither the witch nor the wizard care about him except for his potential for violence.

Troll by Troll -U.S.

Even so, he is convinced that the destroying the witch will do some good and possibly set him free from the wizard's service. But as he is victorious over her, the form of the witch morphs into that of the wizard, who has simply been using the Troll all along to culminate a dastardly spell which occasions a great flood on Earth, destroying everything. The tyrannical wizard disappears into the aether, and Troll is forced to resort to magic to escape, calling forth a celestial Dragon and leaving the Earth to take refuge on the moon until the waters of flood recede.

This is where Legend Master begins, opening with Troll being marooned on the moon for a thousand days and nights while the earth dries up. When it does, he is stricken to find that the planet seems completely dead and nothing has survived. In a fit of desperate depression, he and his dragon depart our galaxy to search deep space for any signs of coexistence, of aliens or gods. He finds nothing, but remembering that the evil wizard had mentioned something of a God at the End of The Universe, the Troll presses on into the icy blackness of total void in order to salvage something from his seemingly meaningless existence.

It is there that he finds the Watcher, The Legend Master: the thing of things, the memory and mind of all events that have ever happened, and ever will. Asked by the Troll to divulge his secrets, the Legend Master opens his hollow mouth to tell some strange tales of personal betrayal and lost loves, showing he too had once been mortal.

The Troll doesn't know that black magick hexes the Master's words as he speaks, for once the Watcher tells his tale out-loud to a listener, the listener must take his place. On the completion of his tale, the Legend Master disappears through a door leading into a vortex, freed by the completion of the spell, and Troll is pulled through the door and vortex into an lifeless interzone, to live forever with his lonely mantle as the God at the End of The Universe.

Troll is aghast, and vows to build himself an incomparable temple to his godhood, to enjoy the fruits of his limitless power. But this too becomes tiresome, and he longs to end his eternal life- which he does, committing ritual suicide while renouncing his power and burying himself in a shrine lost in the void -- but all is not yet void. The Troll's story will conclude in the third album, part III.

Legend Master by Troll

Tell us specifically about the song we are premiering and, in some detail, what it is about, how you composed it, who was involved, any tie-ins with fantasy/sci-fi lore, and anything else interesting about its recording or live performance.

The song "Legend Master, Book I: Proverbs of Hell" was built around a riff Wayne (bass) had been kicking around since 2003. The rest of the band worked out a structure and added melodies and riffs, with vocal placements being specifically sequenced to fit the album's lyrical progression. It wasn't the first song finished for this album, but it has been in our live repertoire for almost two years now.

The song thematically functions as a reverie or remembrance of a mortal episode in the Legend Master's pre-divine life, the spark of his disillusionment and search for godhood. He is trying to show the Troll that there is nothing good about being a god, especially since the wistful memories only claw at the Legend Master -- he longs to sit again by the river with his beloved one more time, but cannot.

The subtitle "Proverbs of Hell" references the collection of aphorisms of the Devil from "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" by William Blake. Allusion is made to the poem in the lyrics, and the Troll doesn't understand that the Legend Master is hinting to his face that the Troll is the one who is doomed: being transfixed by the story, the Troll doesn't see his own transformation into a lonely god happening.

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#D&S Reviews #TROLL #Portland #Oregon #Doom #Metal #Doom Metal #Fantasy #Shadow Kingdom Records #D&S Interviews #Doomed & Stoned

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heartofhryule · 7 years ago

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Breath of the Wild: Captured Memories - Chapter 5

First and foremost; SPOILER WARNINGS. If you have not played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, or completed the Captured Memories Quest and want to stay un-spoiler-ed for it, DO NOT READ.

So I am writing these as I play through BotW for the first time - which means they probably won’t be ‘one-a-day’ consistent as its taking me forEVER to get to all of them, AND they probably won't be in any respectable order - just what I get to as I find them. My intent is to find them all, and summarize once I have found and have a story for each of the 18 memories required to get the bonus ending for the game. Once that's done, I will wrap it all up with a final chapter after I beat the game.

I will post them as I can though! Promise! I also plan to include links to the cutscene for you to watch at the bottom, if so desired - at least for the ones I can find. Any other warnings that become necessary, I will add for content as I go. For now, enjoy!

Chapter 5 - Hyrule Castle

It had seemed like a good idea a week ago.

Now, the closer he got to the Castle, to the corruption of Calamity Ganon, the more Link was regretting his choices. There were more guardians that any one place should ever have - flying, ground, stationary, mobile… it was a nightmare.

Zelda. Her name was Zelda. He knew that now. He’d heard the name before, Impa, King Rhoam’s spirit… but once Mipha said it, he knew it. Zelda - the name sparked those feelings in his chest, those ones that he didn’t have to understand to feel their power. Zelda - it was the name of the voice who’d awakened him; Her voice.

Now, here he was, soaked to the bone from swimming up waterfalls and trying his damnedest to scale a castle wall… silently. It was proving difficult. But above him, there was a parapet, that led to a small tower room… where he had stood, listening to Zelda - Princess Zelda, he had to remind himself - listening to her talk about the defenses they had in place against Calamity Ganon, should he return. He didn’t remember words, but wanted to. They were interrupted by something, but he couldn’t recall that either.. And he knew if he could make it to that spot, he would remember. He needed to - something had changed that day. Something important.

That was, of course, if he could make it without dying.

Which wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Reaching the top of the parapet, he ducked into the ruined room he vaguely remembered having been there, dodging the targeting of at least three Guardians to do so - only to find the Ganon blight eyeball blinking at him in a way he was becoming used to - upsetting as that was. With one arrow, he dispacted it. Unfortunately, he was now on a timer. This stuff had some kind of sentience - some tie back to the Calamity. Soon, more Guardians would come. He had to hurry.

Stepping silently out to the path, crouching to avoid being seen over the parapet wall, he pulled out the Sheikah Slate to confirm, and as the picture loaded before him, he was taken by the memory he sought.

***

The day was beautiful around them, breezy but not too cold. Zelda strode in front of him watching as in the courtyard below, the Sheikah and workers were tweaking and perfecting control over the Guardians.

He watched at the joy filled her smile, and it warmed his heart. Despite their rocky start, Link had come to care deeply for Princess Zelda in their time together. She was smart, funny, beautiful - always beautiful, but more so when she smiled like that.

“Incredible…” she said reverently, eyes focused on the work below her. “We’re at a point now, where we can actually control them. At the current rate, we’ll soon know all we need to know about the Guardians and Divine Beasts.” Turning from her vigil, she looked at him, and even in the memory his heart leapt a touch. Much of their time together had been spent travelling, Zelda in her breeches and riding boots. But just now, she was the picture of royalty in her blue and white regalia… but no less the scholar he knew her to be. It made him smile.

“And,” she added brightly, “should Ganon ever show itself again, we will be well positioned to defend ourselves!” Link smiled, his lips parting as he was about to compliment her for her hand in the gathering of that information to bring this to fruition, when a voice interjected.

“What are you doing out here, Zelda?” King Rhoam’s gruff voice demanded from the other side of the parapet. Link dropped to one knee and lowered his eyes as was expected of him, but his intuition told him something was wrong. The King loved his daughter, but in Link’s opinion, he was too harsh on her. Treated her… poorly. Like an object.

Zelda spun to meet her father’s gaze in surprise, her hands falling to her sides before clenching to stand her ground. “I… I was assessing the results of the experiments with the Guardians. These pieces of Ancient Technology could be quite useful against the--”

“I know that,” the King interrupted in irritation. “They are essential to Hyrule’s future and our research demands that we keep a close eye on them. However, as the PRincess you currently have a crucial, unfulfilled responsibility to your kingdom.” Though he did not dare look up to the King, Link’s eyes cut up from where he knelt to watch the Princess. This was not the first time he’d witnessed something like this between them. The harder the King pushed, the further it pushed Zelda away, from both her father and her destiny. It wasn’t right.

“I will ask you once more,” The King said, giving his daughter a cold look, “When will you stop treating this as some sort of childish game?”

Zelda stepped forward, her tone nearly pleading with her father as she said, “I’m doing everything I can. I’ll have you know, that I just recently returned from the Spring of Courage and offered every ounce of my prayers to the Goddess--”

“And now you are here wasting your time,” Rhoam snapped. “You need to be dedicating every moment of your time to your training. You must be single-minded in unlocking the power that will seal Calamity Ganon away!”

“I already am!” Zelda swore, her voice soft and desperate. “Don’t you see--There’s nothing more I can do!” She looked to her father, Link clenching his teeth and fists against saying anything. It was not his place to speak here, and certainly not to correct a King. Zelda was telling the truth, and while the Knight wasn’t entirely sure what was expected of his ward, he knew she had been trying very hard to unlock “the power” as she called it, and assure safety for Hyrule’s future.

“My hope… My hope is that, you’ll allow me to contribute here in whatever way I can!” she pleaded with her father. But the King shook his head, cutting her off.

“No more excuses, Zelda! Stop running away from your duty.” He paused briefly, as if he might actually be hesitant for what he was about to say, but it did not stop him. “As the King, I forbid you to have anything to do with these machines from this moment on… and command you to focus on your training.”

The soft, broken noise Zelda made was barely audible above the wind - only Link could hear it for his proximity to her, as the King turned to face the courtyard below. “You you know how the gossip mongers refer to you? Thy are out there at this moment, whispering amongst themselves… That you are the heir to a throne of nothing… nothing but failure.”

Teeth grinding together, Link knew this was hurting Zelda. It hurt him for her to even hear. The King’s words were cruel, true or not - it was not what she needed. How could the King not see this? “It is woven into your destiny that you prove them wrong,” the King added slightly less gruff, “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Zelda said simply, hands clasped in front of her, and head bowed in shame. “I understand.” As the King accepted her acquiescence and strode back into the castle, the wind carried away Zelda’s tears. Once he again, could, Link stood. Reaching a hand out, he ever so gently touched the back of her arm in comfort, and for a moment, he saw her face crumble.

But quickly, her royal demeanor was restored. “We leave tonight.”

Swallowing his anger at the King for the moment, Link forced his voice to be gentle - Mipha was better at these things. “That’s not a good idea, your highness. The monsters will be out in force.”

“I cannot be in this castle… his castle… any longer than I have to be.”

“Yes, Princess. But tonight-”

“I am your Princess,” she said spinning around and jabbing a finger into his chest. “You do as I command!”

Link sighed internally. She had to get it out somewhere, and he was basically the only person around most of the time, in addition to the fact that he was a reminder of what she’d yet to achieve… and her father’s commandments. Setting his jaw he shook his head. “That may be, highness, but I am in charge of your safety, and I have final say when it comes to that. You know it, I know it, and I highly doubt either of us want to go ask the king for clarity on the matter.”

She snorted and backpedaled from him a step, turning to storm back towards her chambers. “You would like that, wouldn’t you? Just to make sure I do the bidding of all of my jailers!”

Frowning, Link followed her. “I… said that i wouldn’t want that. We’re on the same side when it comes to talking to the king.”

“You follow his commands, you’re a Knight! Why wouldn’t you want to speak with him?” she demanded, throwing things about now that they were in her room in the tower, as she made an emotional attempt to pack.

“Because I despise the way he talks to you. Treats you. Like a thing, a weapon, or a tool to be honed and nothing more,” Link said, crossing his arms and leaning back against her wall to give her room for her tantrum. In his mind, she had every right to be angry, and very little to do about it. She could throw things. That was fine.

But at his words, she stopped and looked at him. Behind her eyes something passed - something had changed for her days ago. But he didn’t know what. She sighed, and sat down hard on the edge of her bed, staring at the floor. “I’m sorry, Link. I’m not mad at you. Forgive me.”

“Already did, Princess,” he promised as the memory began to fade.

***

Coming to, he stood on the parapet looking out over the blighted and wartorn courtyard that had once been home to the guardians meant to protect them. To protect Her. Looking up to the rest of the castle, there had been so much fear, anger, misunderstanding… The King pushing Zelda without an ounce of outward empathy, the foolishness to assume that ancient technology could be controlled against an ancient being. Hubris, naivety, careless is what they had been.

No wonder they’d failed.

But then there was Zelda - her clear, green eyes and sharp mind. She was here. Somewhere - Ganon was mostly contained, whether by her spirit, or by her living self he didn’t know. What he did know is that he was confused. The feeling tied to this memory were different than the ones before. Before there had been resentment of her cold nature and inability to accept him. Then later patience, compassion, even fondness. This last memory though, it was far stronger, far more powerful a feeling - one he was not yet comfortable giving a name.

There were too many gaps. Too much information he lacked to allow that feeling to be named yet. He needed to go, needed to find more answers, face more Trials - become stronger. Hero or not, if what he was starting to recall was true, then he was going to save Zelda, even if it was the last thing he did.

She was here, and that thought sent a lurching thrill through his heart. But there was no way for him to go further without meeting certain death. Not yet. It pained him to go, to abandon here here with this nightmare for any longer than necessary… but being ready, freeing the Divine Beasts was necessary.

“I’m here, Princess,” he said softly to the wind. “And I will be back soon. Sooner than you think. I will save you, I promise.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyAwbgW7tCc

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rudylozanole · 3 years ago

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sitandbreatheitout · 5 years ago

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Day 9/40: Politics

Start at Day 1

It may seem strange for the topic of *politics* to feature prominently in the story of my *faith* journey [heads up, there’s still two more posts about it, sprinkled throughout this 40-day series], but it’s not surprising if you came of age within the 90s evangelical subculture. In the world I grew up in, being a good Christian was synonymous with voting Republican. Love of God and love of Country were so thoroughly entwined that at church youth events we pledged allegiance to the American flag AND the Christian flag, both of them standing together on stage.

Talking about politics requires me to step backwards from where we found ourselves yesterday, on the precipice of my faith deconstruction at age 30. The shifts that I’m going to describe today mostly happened during my mid-twenties. Because of the way evangelicals tie their religious identity to their political identity, my changing views had a deep impact on the rest of the journey, but at the time, they weren’t a deal-breaker for remaining in the evangelical church.

The view from here is murky when I try to remember where and how I absorbed the political messages I did. I do remember a few sources. Some of the messages were directly expressed from pulpits on Sunday mornings. Some were implied by the dehumanizing language we used when referring to our political opponents. Some were printed in the history books at my Christian school. Some were even dramatized on Adventures in Odyssey, the beloved kids radio show from Focus on the Family.

I was taught that America was a Christian nation, founded by Christians, based on Judeo-Christian values, and that God’s hand of providence was the reason behind our nation’s success. We saw America as a New Israel, God’s most recent chosen people, blessed in order to be a blessing to the world. I was also taught that in modern times there had been an unfortunate rise in secular thinking and a rejection of Biblical values, and that was the cause of all sorts of problems in the world.

Our job as Christians was to “take back” our culture and country for God. No one was better suited for the role of running the country (and everything else, for that matter) than Christians were, because we had the Holy Spirit guiding us from within. I’m so removed from this belief now that I can’t describe it without it sounding like a caricature or oversimplification, so bear with me, but we were very distrusting of all non-Christians. We believed that since they were being deceived by Satan, nothing truly good could come from them. Even people who claimed to be Christian but didn’t believe in the Bible the same way we did were suspect; “liberal Christian” was an oxymoron in our evangelical world. We believed all the things the Bible had to say about people who lived by the “flesh” instead of by the “Spirit”: that they desired to perform acts of “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like” (Galatians 5:19-21). Yikes. No wonder we were scared of them.

So what does voting for the Republican party have to do with all this? How did it become the de facto political party of choice for white American evangelicals? That is a long and surprising-in-places history lesson that’s unfortunately outside the scope of this post [but don’t worry, it WILL come up again in a couple weeks]. Anyway, for our purposes, as it relates to how I experienced politics growing up, there is one very simple answer to those questions: ABORTION.

We understood abortion to be morally equivalent to murdering breathing babies who’d already been born. It was seen as a horrendously evil act, from the moment of conception on, regardless of the circumstances or effects of said conception. That was that: it was black and white. End of story. Kind of like how the seriousness of our belief in a literal hell overrode all other spiritual concerns, the seriousness of our belief that abortion was literally infanticide overrode all other political concerns. In both cases, the implications of our beliefs were gruesome to imagine. Ending abortion was the rally cry that united us, and at the end of the day (or rather: on Election Day), we were going to vote for the candidate who said they were "pro-life," no matter what. The Republicans reliably fit that designation, so they were our heroes, fighting the good fight against abortion.

There wasn’t a lot of nuance to my political views growing up. It’s similar to how my own kids are *very* emphatic that they like whoever it is I just told them I’m voting for. It’s because I’m their mom, not because they know anything about the candidate’s platform. Humans are social creatures, and we feel safest when we stay in step with the views of our tribe. The views of my tribe seemed mostly black and white to me, up through high school. Republicans = good, Democrats = bad. Conservatives = good, liberals = bad. Traditional family values = good, feminists and gay people = bad. Ronald Reagan and George Bush = good, Bill and Hillary Clinton = bad. Small government = good, big government = bad. Prayer in public school = good, patriotism = good, abortion = bad, welfare handouts = bad. We justified all of these positions using verses from the Bible, so we felt confident we were voting how God wanted us to vote.

So off I went to my conservative Christian college. There were several student-led clubs on campus, including a College Republicans group, and while I was a freshman, some students were petitioning to start a College Democrats group. This was shocking to a lot of us sheltered evangelical kids. At the time, I didn’t even know you COULD be a Christian and a Democrat. We debated amongst ourselves: what did it say about someone’s Christian witness if they supported the “godless" platform of the Democratic party? WHAT ABOUT THE BABIES?!

Where it got interesting was that I noticed the ratio of *minority students* was extremely high in the newly-formed College Democrats group. This troubled me, because it made me wonder that I might be missing some important piece of information regarding race and politics. Growing up in very white North Dakota (where there was a grand total of 5 black students attending my whole PreK through Grade 12 Christian school—I just counted in the yearbook), I had been blind to issues surrounding race. I was realizing I had a lot to learn, and that it might be wise to listen to the people whose voices had been overlooked by the dominant culture.

Another way college influenced my political beliefs was one of my favorite classes: Introduction to Logic, where we learned about reasoning and making good arguments. This wasn’t directly related to any specific political affiliation; rather, critical thinking is essential for evaluating political claims, no matter which side you’re on. I was a happy little nerd when we got to the section on “logical fallacies,” because while their existence was obvious (they frustrated me to no end: hello, debates on the playground), I wasn’t previously aware that anyone had formally studied and *named* them! The class proved that it wasn’t just my imagination; people really were making errors in reasoning ALL THE TIME.

By the time I graduated from college, I was still very much a Republican, but its link to my Christian identity was weakening. I was better equipped to spot bad arguments going forward, and I was starting to get suspicious of ones I had heard growing up.

In the lead up to the 2008 election, when I was 25, I read a book called Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals. It was one of the most controversial books I’d read to that point, though being published by evangelical Zondervan, it still stayed safely within the Christian bubble. After growing uncomfortable with the religious rhetoric around the War on Terror, I was soothed by the book’s Christian pacifist leanings. I wasn’t sure how realistic nonviolence was, but it seemed exactly like the kind of countercultural thing Jesus would have been into.

Most importantly, the book revealed a fascinating side of the Bible I’d never been exposed to before. I’d read through the entire Old and New Testaments, memorized whole chapters of it, heck, even graduated with Biblical Studies as my double major, and yet no one had explained in such interesting detail the socio-economic impacts of Old Testament laws and stories and Jesus’s teachings and ministry. Over and over the Bible shows God to be deeply concerned for the poor and vulnerable, and not all that impressed with powerful empires. It looked like evangelicals could come to different conclusions about politics, all while being faithful to the Bible.

In the end, I honestly can’t remember who I voted for that year, Obama or McCain. Either way, the 2008 election, the first time I'd ever *favorably* considered a Democrat candidate, was a turning point for me. Over the next 4 years, especially as I approached the beginning of my faith deconstruction, my political affiliation would change to Democrat— officially, but mostly privately. This was my first big break outside the beliefs of my Christian bubble, away from the safety of my tribe.

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ec-sanderssides · 8 years ago

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I went out of my hiatus for like five seconds to tell you. I NEED MORE OF THE HIGHSCHOOL ANALOGICAL BECAUSE HOLY SHIT I LOVE IT -analogically-prinxiety

Well, here you go. Part II of The Most Awkward Semester Ever. I hope you like it.

Logan had come up with a brilliant idea.

Of course, he frequently came up with brilliant ideas, but for once this did not entirely fall into the realm of academia. This idea also held a social component.

He and Virgil had been continuing to meet for the past two weeks. They had decided to do their project on Lord Byron, as Virgil had seemed especially interested in him. Logan could admit he was a fascinating figure. And he was the father of Ada Lovelace!

So they had begun the preliminary research into Byron’s biography and time period, but had yet to decide on a poem. That was what this meeting was for. However, unlike their previous meetings, they would not be at the library.

Logan had noticed that despite his efforts to seem approachable and less intimidating, Virgil still seemed incredibly nervous around him. Thus Logan had concocted his plan.

On Friday, he had invited Virgil to come over to his house on Saturday for their next study session, instead of going to the library. His hope was that by meeting in a less formal setting, Virgil would relax more, and become more comfortable with him. To this end, he had also arranged several entertaining activities to partake in when they were done with studying.

He looked around the room. Everything had been set up. The kitchen was stocked with a variety of snacks. His notebooks were ready and waiting on the dining table, and the puzzles and other objects of entertainment had been placed in the living room. Now all he awaited was Virgil’s arrival.

He nodded to himself, satisfied. Yes, this was going to go perfectly.

This was going to be a disaster.

Virgil stared up the house in front of him. “I don’t think I can do this,” he said shakily. “Maybe I should just go home and crawl back into bed.”

Behind him, Roman sighed. “First of all, it’s two in the afternoon,” he said exasperated, “And secondly, I did not pick you up and drive you all the way here for you to chicken out and leave. Buck up, Debbie Downer. You’re going to do this.”

“And what if I screw this up and he hates me,” Virgil said through gritted teeth, trying not to let his knees shake. Why had he agreed to this? Oh, that’s right, Logan had smiled at him, and his brain had turned to mush. Something that would undoubtedly happen again, making him look even more stupid.

“Look, Virgil,” Roman sighed, drawing him out of his thoughts. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. But, I suppose, if it really gets bad, you can text me, and I’ll come and get you.”

Virgil looked down at his feet. Roman may have annoyed the heck out of him sometimes, but he actually was a really good friend. “Thanks,” he said softly.

“Yeah, whatever,” Roman said, waving him off, “Now get in there and have a wonderful date!”

Virgil flushed. “It’s not a date!” he shouted.

But Roman only laughed, getting back in the car. “Whatever you say, Virgil, whatever you say.”

Virgil took it all back. Roman was dead to him.

He turned back towards Logan’s house. Right, time to face the music.

He trudged to the door, feeling his mouth dry up and his palms begin to sweat. Why was he so useless around his crush? Still there wasn’t another choice. He knocked on the door.

Logan opened it almost immediately. (Had he been waiting by the door for him?

“Ah, Virgil, excellent,” he said, stepping to the side, “Please come in.”

Still feeling like his heart was going to beat out of his chest, Virgil stepped inside. He glanced around. It seemed like an average home. Not too fancy, but still fairly nice.

“My parents are still at work,” Logan explained, closing the door, “So we’ll have the place to ourselves.”

“S-sounds good,” Virgil mumbled. So he was alone with Logan. That was …fine.

“Do you want something to eat?” Logan continued, “I have snacks in the kitchen.”

“I’m fine with whatever,” Virgil replied, carefully keeping his eyes on the floor. “I don’t- I don’t want to be a bother.”

“It’s not bother at all,” Logan assured him. “Come, the kitchen is this way.”

Virgil could only follow behind Logan helplessly. Why did he have to be so nice? If he had turned out to be a terrible person, this would have been so much easier.

Logan kept sneaking glances back towards Virgil. The other boy still looked uncomfortable and unsure. But he had only just come in. Logan was sure he could change that.

Upon reaching the kitchen, he went to the counter where he had placed the snacks earlier. Since Virgil hadn’t specified what he wanted, and he’d previously checked to see if the other had any food allergies, he grabbed the peanut butter filled pretzels, some watermelon slices, and since Virgil had liked them last time, chocolate chip cookies.

Careful to keep the plates balanced, Logan turned to face Virgil. “I have my notes out in the dining room, so we can sit there if you like?”

Virgil only nodded. He was still looking at the floor. Logan resisted the urge to frown. His plan would work.

He quickly made his way to the living room, and after setting the snacks down, pulled out a chair for Virgil.

Once they had both sat down, Logan decided to engage in some small talk. Not something he normally did, but it might help Virgil relax. “So do you have any other plans for the weekend?”

Virgil seemed to struggle for words for a moment, before hesitantly replying, “No, not really. Just homework, I guess.”

“I don’t either,” Logan confessed. “I often find social interaction to be draining, so I tend to limit my engagement. Your company is quite pleasant though.”

It wasn’t a lie. Logan really did like spending time with the other. He was intelligent, not overly loud, and the sarcastic remarks he let slip when he relaxed made Logan chuckle. He just wanted the other to stop flinching from him.

It didn’t look like the words had been quite as reassuring as he’d hoped though, as Virgil looked ready to fall out of his chair.

“Oh-you-I-uh, thank.. you” Virgil finally said, sounding somewhat strangled. “You-you’re-uh- not. You’re pretty- pretty cool too. Should- should we work on poetry now?”

His voice had grown oddly high-pitched by the end of his sentence. Perhaps it was time to move onto the project. Clearly small talk was not Virgil’s forte either.

“Yes, let’s.” he agreed. “Have you any suggestions as to which poem we should analyze? I find it’s difficult for me to choose. There is of course the classic Byron poem ‘She walks in Beauty’, but I am also fond of the poem ‘Thou art Dead, as Young and Fair’. What are your thoughts?”

“Oh, well, I really liked ‘Darkness’,” Virgil mumbled. “A-and ‘Prometheus’, since it’s got all the references to Greek mythology and stuff.”

Logan ran through the poems in his mind. They were both dark in tone, which he wasn’t surprised by. Virgil did seem to enjoy that sort of thing, given his interest in the Romantic poets. As for the last sentence…

“Do you enjoy Greek mythology then?” he asked, eager to get the other to open up.

“Yeah,” Virgil said, “I do. I know it’s a little weird, but I just think those stories are just interesting, and kind of cool, I guess. I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter.”

Logan interrupted before Virgil could self-depricate anymore. “No, no, I agree. They are quite fascinating. I suggest we choose ‘Prometheus’ then, as it has something we’re both interested in.”

Virgil looked up, actually meeting Logan’s eyes, and there was even a hint of a smile on his face. “Sounds good,” he replied.

Logan managed to keep his expression neutral, but it was near thing. His plan was working. He truly was brilliant. Now to work on the poem.

For the next hour, they went through the poem together, working out it’s meaning, making notes on literary devices, and essentially setting the ground work for their more in-depth explication needed for the project.

As they went on, Virgil seemed to unwind a little more and had begun casually snacking on the food Logan had set out. At the moment, he was munching on a watermelon slice.

“I think we’re going to have to talk about, like, Christian influences too,” he was saying, “cause aside from the obvious Greek stuff, some of this sounds pretty Christian, with all the mentions of Spirit and things like that.”

Logan hummed. “I agree,” he said, “That would be a good place to tie in the cultural and social influences, as Christianity was quite a predominate influence in Western Europe at that time.”

“Sounds good,” Virgil muttered, setting down his watermelon, to make a note on his paper. As he did, Logan noticed that he had a watermelon seed stuck on his cheek.

“Oh, hold still,” he said absentmindedly, going to wipe it off.

After he had done so though, Virgil was staring at him as though Logan had just slapped him, his eyes wide, and his shoulders pulled up tightly around him. All of the progress he had made in getting the other to relax had been undone.

Logan scolded himself mentally. He shouldn’t have invaded the other’s personal space, clearly the fear hadn’t fully dissipated, and he had pushed the boundaries.

Internally, Virgil was just screaming.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Hetouchedme.WhatdoIdo?WhatdoIdo?

Wait, Logan had said something. He blinked, trying to refocus.

As if sensing his distraction, Logan repeated, “Are you alright?”

Virgil wasn’t sure what kind of noise he made in reply, but judging by Logan’s frown, it wasn’t a good one. Great, just great. Now the other was really going to hate him.

But then he spoke again. “Perhaps we should take a break. Would you care to work on a puzzle with me?”

Puzzle. Yeah, he could do a puzzle. Puzzles were good and helped his brain calm down. Not trusting himself to speak without any more embarrassing noises coming out, he just nodded.

“Great,” Logan replied briskly, “They’re in the living room, so let’s move there.”

Virgil silently followed Logan. When they got to the living room, Logan pulled out a pretty large collection of puzzles. Virgil’s eyes swept over them. There was everything from famous art pieces to Disney. It was impressive.

“You can pick one out,” Logan told him. Well, that didn’t put any pressure on him at all.

After spending another minute looking them over, Virgil finally settled on a galaxy puzzle. It looked pretty cool.

Logan smiled when he pulled it from the pile. “Good choice,” he said, “That’s one of my favorites. Come, we can set it up on the floor.”

Virgil moved to sit beside Logan so they were both leaning against the couch, puzzle spread out in front of them. Part of him felt like Logan was still too close for him to properly focus, but he pushed the feeling away. He was not going to make an idiot of himself again.

Swallowing his nerves, he began to look for the corner pieces. When he had found them, he held them out the other with a shaky smile. He could keep it together for a bit longer. He had just had to stay cool.

He was totally going to scream when he got home though.

Part I Part IIIPart IV Part V Part VI

#virgil sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #analogical #sanders sides #the most awkward semester ever #fanfic #my fic

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